Reunion
by phantomhamster
Summary: The team has been split up completely for almost 5 years. They've been drifting further and further apart, but now, a case has come up that will force them to work together again. Case-fic with Tony at the helm. Hints of Tiva.
1. Chapter 1

"The case will be handled by our best agents. You can rest assured that the culprit will be found."

"That's not good enough, Leon!" The response came, accompanied by the crash of a fist on the desk. "My team is the best, and you know it!"

"That's debatable," was the Director of NCIS's cool reply. "The fact remains that this case is completely outside of your jurisdiction."

"This isn't about jurisdiction. This is about—"

"Revenge? Payback?" Vance raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Justice."

"And you think your team has a monopoly on justice? You haven't changed a bit. Still think yours is the only opinion that matters." He paused, shifting a toothpick in his mouth. "As it is, I have a number of teams breaking down my door for this detail. Your record is top-notch, sure, but so are theirs, and in the end it comes down to protocol. No special treatment."

"But—"

"No buts. That's my final word on the subject. Now, I'd thank you to get back to work. " He turned in his chair as his final act of dismissal. He waited to hear the slam of the door before righting himself behind his desk.

To the Director's surprise, his visitor had not yet left. The agent stood facing the door, his back to the desk. His whole body slumped suddenly, the picture of defeat.

"Please." He said, voice low and rough. "Please let me take this case."

"Agent DiNozzo—"

The younger agent turned on his heel suddenly, eyes shining slightly. "I know I'm not your favorite guy, and I know I'm not part of your "wink, wink, nudge, nudge"' inner circle, but I also know that you're no stranger to bending the rules. What's more, I know how much pressure you're getting to close this case quickly. I worked this area for over a decade, and my apprehension rate speaks for itself. I can get you that quick closure. All I'm asking is for you to let me do it." He swallowed audibly. "Please."

He let his plea hang in the air for a moment. When no answer seemed forthcoming, his shoulders slumped once more, and he turned back to the door, reached for the handle—

"Wait." Vance said. Tony turned an ear in his direction, hand hovering in mid-air. "All right. I'll grant your request. Temporary reassignment to D.C., effective immediately. Bring in your team, close this case, and go back to the central office. Do it fast and do it right. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir." There was a note of triumph in Tony's voice now, and he opened the door with alacrity, in a hurry to begin.

"And DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, Director?" He responded absent-mindedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Bring the perpetrator in alive."

Tony paused thoughtfully, then turned to flash a crooked, almost cruel half-grin. "I'll do my best, sir." As he closed the door behind him, making good his escape, he muttered quickly, "But no promises."

Agent DiNozzo bounded down the once-familiar steps of the NCIS home office, taking them two at a time. He needed to contact his team and have them come here immediately. There was no time to lose.

The office was still dark and mostly empty, the one benefit of coming in a six in the morning. As he touched down on the landing, he couldn't help but follow his feet to the cluster of desks that used to be his second home—sometimes even his first. He ran his hand across the dull metal top of his former desk, sighing.

"Five years is a long time," he said to himself. He sighed again. In the shadows of the early morning hours, it almost felt as if he was still there, answering to barks of "DiNozzo!" and slaps on the head. He forced the memories back, trying to focus on the present. The case, that was all that mattered.

Suddenly, he heard the faint rustle of clothing behind him. He sensed a presence just at his back, and without a moment's hesitation, he said to the air,

"Al."

"Yes, Boss?" came the prompt reply.

He turned to find a young woman standing at attention. She was shorter than him, much shorter, and looked up at him with wide, inquisitive, and determinedly innocent-looking eyes.

"What are you doing here?" Tony asked. It seemed less a question than a statement of mild surprise, as if he had expected her to be there all along.

"My job." She responded. "We have a case, don't we?"

"Yes, we have a case. As of about five minutes ago. When I left the office last night, I specifically told you that I didn't have a case, but that you should be on standby in case I called. Or maybe I imagined that?"

"No, I remember it, too." The young agent called Al said reassuringly. "So probably it happened. Either that or we shared in some form of group hallucination. But that seems unlikely."

"Doesn't it?" He said irritably. "So you disobeyed my instructions."

"Only a little," she said earnestly. "Oh, before I forget, Anders told me to tell you that you should really learn to clear your web history. For future reference, he said."

"So you snooped around my computer."

"No, weren't you listening? Anders did."

Ignoring her assignation of blame, he moved on to, "How did you get here so fast?"

She smiled. "I was on the same plane as you. Economy class. Lucky there were some seats left, huh?"

"Yeah, lucky." He said with a pained expression. "So, where are the guys?"

She chewed her lip for a moment before answering. "Well, I told them they should wait until we called them in."

"And?"

"And their flight lands in 20 minutes."

Tony ran a hand through his hair. "Of course it does."

"So we have a case?" Al asked eagerly.

"Yeah. And a temporary reassignment to the Washington office."

"Whoa. A big case." He looked at her with an ironically raised eyebrow. "Which makes sense, since you were just in with the director. Duh." She pantomimed slapping herself upside the back of her head.

Tony shrugged, but said nothing else, leaning back against his old desk with his arms crossed in front of him.

"So…" she said in an attempt to break the silence. "What are we talking? Murder, kidnapping, theft? Navy, Marines, dependant?"

He glanced at her briefly. "A shooting. And a federal agent."

Her eyes somehow managed to open even wider. "One of ours? Oh, God, is it someone we know?" The playful lilt had left her voice to be replaced with faint panic.

"Not one you know." He said, voice low and rough once again.

She heaved a sigh a relief, then realized, "Someone you know, then."

"Yeah. My old boss, actually." It seemed to physically pain him to say those words; he said them through gritted teeth and a clenched jaw, and his eyes had once again taken on a slight shine.

Al's eyes drifted downward, resting comfortably on her tennis shoes. "I'm sorry, Boss." She raised her eyes to his for a moment. "We'll get who did it. I know we will."

"Yeah, yeah. I know." He smiled genuinely this time. He straightened up where he stood, and rubbed his arms absently. "Look, I gotta go do some stuff in the building for a bit. Pick one of these desks, and get settled. Tell the guys to do the same." He started walking away, then stopped.

"Not that one, okay?" He said, pointing to the empty desk on the far left.

"Gotcha, Boss." She said immediately. He nodded, then made his way to the elevator. As he was pressing the button, Al cleared her throat softly.

"Um, Boss?" She asked. "You said it was a shooting," she said without waiting to be acknowledged. "Is he—the agent, I mean—will he be okay? I mean, is there a chance he could be—?"

"No." Came the solemn reply as Tony stepped into the bright light of the elevator. "Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs is dead."


	2. Chapter 2

Tony stepped out of the elevator into a dark hallway. He knew that no one should be there, not yet, but there was something churning in his gut that made him need to check. Just to be sure.

The silver door was open, just like always, but the room was dark and still. No music. He felt a sense of relief washing over him when the heart-wrenching sound of a sob split the air.

"Abby?"

The scientist lay in a crumpled heap on the floor of her laboratory. Her hair hung lank around her face and her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. She was even paler than usual, and her trademark make-up was nowhere to be found. Everything about her seemed…broken.

Tony crouched down at her side, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Abby, what are you doing here? The director said he sent you home." He tried to help her stand up, but she didn't budge.

"'m waiting." She murmured thickly.

"For what?" He stroked her hair. "Abby, no one's here yet. And there are no cases today, not for you. You need to go home," he said gently. "You need to sleep."

"No. I can't leave. Not yet." She shook her head weakly. "I'm waiting for Gibbs."

"Abs, Gibbs isn't coming."

"No!" She shouted, voice cracking. "He has to come. He has to turn off my music, and say "What do ya got, Abs." He has to kiss me on the cheek and put up with my rambling and give me my Caf-Pow!" She rocked back and forth, tears streaming down her face for what had to be the hundredth time that day, and whispered, "He has to hold me close and tell me that he'll always be here for me."

Tony seized her in a massive hug, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her almost into his lap. "Abby, he can't do those things anymore. You know that."

"I don't know anything!" She wailed, fighting against his embrace. "I don't know…I don't know…" She struggled to free her arms, trying to hit at him any way she could.

"I'm here. It's me, Tony." He said soothingly, ignoring her attacks and continuing to hold her close. "I came because you called me, remember?"

She just kept struggling, kept chanting "I don't know…I don't know…"

"You called me on my cell around midnight. You told me Gibbs was…you told me what happened. You asked me to come. Don't you remember?"

"I don't know…I don't know…"

"Abby, you were the one who found him. You saw him with your own two eyes. You know he's not coming back. You know…" He hated saying it. Every time he said those words, it became harder and harder to deny it. Like he was killing Gibbs each time he said it, and killing himself, too. "You know he's dead."

Those words seemed to destroy whatever resistance Abby had left, and she stopped fighting. She just let herself be held for a moment as sobs racked her small frame.

After a full minute of silence, of him holding her and her letting him, she finally raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were still red, still swollen, but they saw him now. She hiccupped weakly. "I don't know what I'm gonna do without him, Tony."

"Oh, Abs." He sighed, then pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. "Me, neither."

. . .

Special Agent Ally Duncan had absolutely no idea what to do with herself. She felt like she should be working on the case, but beyond the name of the victim (and his relationship to her boss, Anthony DiNozzo), she knew nothing about it.

She leaned back in her recently claimed chair as far as she possibly could, just barely managing to stay upright. She brushed a stray hair out of her face. She adjusted her glasses, looked at her watch, drummed her fingers on her leg.

For a moment, she thought she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, but when she checked—

"Nothing." She sat upright and let out a stream of curses under her breath. "It's been a whole 15 minutes since their plane was supposed to land and they still haven't checked in." She glared at the painfully bright LED screen, willing it to tell her where her teammates were.

She gave a half-hearted glance to the elevator, but she knew there was no way they could be here already. "Especially not if Anders is letting Lex drive again." DiNozzo would not be happy if he got back and the team wasn't ready to go.

It might seem unreasonable, since he had told them not to come in the first place, but DiNozzo had always demanded excellence from his agents. He had only been the head of an MCRT team in Ohio two years when Ally was graduating from the academy, and there were already all kinds of stories about him.

"He's a monster," the other trainees would say. "They say nobody on his team eats, drinks, or sleeps without getting his permission first."

"I heard that the last trainee who got assigned to him quit before he even graduated. He went over to the FBI a week later."

"I heard he's been through five teams in the last three years, and the longest anyone has stayed is three months."

"Well," Ally had asked, "is he a good agent?"

"Oh, yeah." Everyone agreed. "The best. He always gets his man. But nobody wants to work for him."

When Ally found out she was being assigned to him, she was a little frightened. She was sure at least half of the stories about him were made up, but…which half?

Orders were orders, though, and she reported to the NCIS office in Cleveland the week after graduation. "I'm looking for Agent DiNozzo," she said. Was it her imagination, or had that security guard looked at her with pity before escorting her to the cluster of desks that was going to be her new workspace? He handed her off to a tall, good-looking man in his early forties. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place him.

"Hi, I'm your new recruit, Ally Duncan." She held out a hand to shake.

"Al? Funny name for a girl." He said without receiving her hand. "Okay, pick a desk."

"Um, actually, it's Ally."

"Hmm?" He asked sharply.

"Nothing." She said meekly.

"We're gonna take it slow the first week or so. I've asked them to give me the softer cases while I bring you up to speed. But don't get used to it."

"Okay, sir."

He nodded, then sat down at his desk, looking at his computer screen while she scouted out her possibilities.

"Um, sir?" She said after a few minutes had gone by. "Which desks are free?"

He waved a hand absently. "All of them."

"Oh, are the other agents not here yet?"

"Nope." He said with a touch of sarcasm. "There are no other agents. Just you and me."

"Oh," Ally said. "Won't that be a little difficult?"

He finally looked up, incredulous. "It certainly won't be easy, Al." He actually rolled his eyes at her before returning to his work.

"My name is Ally, sir, not Al," she said, irritated at his treatment of her.

"Well, then, we both have a problem, don't we?" He said. "'Cause my name's not 'sir.'"

They were not going to get along.

The next day, all promises of "taking it slow" went out the window when a kid was kidnapped off a naval base. For three days, Ally-dubbed-Al breathed nothing but the job. There was no food because there was no time to eat. There was no sleep because she never went home. And to this day, there were parts of the case she couldn't remember no matter how hard she tried.

But they found the kid. Safe. Alive. And there was no other feeling quite like it, knowing that you have put a family back together. The euphoria from the resolution of the case almost made her forget her fatigue, her aches and pains and hunger. Almost. Satisfied as she was, she couldn't help but think that there was no way she could keep this up. No wonder everyone quit after three months. It amazed her that they made it through one.

But then her boss (she had finally learned what to call him) said three little words to her, and suddenly she was sure she could make it a decade, easy. He came over to her desk, smiled a huge, megawatt smile she'd never seen before, and said,

"Good job, Al."

And that was it. By the next week she was learning to stock up on caffeine, sleep when she could, and lower her standards about what was edible and what wasn't. She stopped wondering when she would be going home and started wondering "if." And she started to learn The Rules.

Suddenly, Ally gasped. "That's where I've heard that name before!" She said gleefully, coming back to the present abruptly. "Gibbs was _that _Gibbs!"

Her boss had a long list of rules. Rules that were not written down, but that his team was expected to know by heart. One day, years ago, he had been teaching them to Ally, saying, "Rule number nine: Always carry a knife. Got that one straight from Gibbs."

"Who's Gibbs?"

He had brushed off the question, but it had stuck in her mind for days afterward. The way he said that name, with pride, reminded her of the way she talked about DiNozzo. She almost felt jealous, wondering who this "Gibbs" person was.

And now she knew. She wished she didn't.

A whirring noise came from the elevator, breaking through her thoughts. She jumped up and ran over to the elevator. It dinged, and the doors opened.

"Guys!" She said eagerly. "I've been waiting for forever. We have to—"

She stopped. "You're not the guys," she said to the unfamiliar man she saw standing in the elevator.

"No," he said slowly. "But I am _a_ guy." He was a thin, young-looking man with short, light brown hair.

"I can see that." Ally said. "Sorry, I was expecting someone else."

"That's okay," he shrugged. "Is the director in?"

"Uh…yeah. He's in his office."

The mystery man jogged awkwardly over to the stairs, then rattled up the steps and into the director's office, slamming the door behind him.

"Huh. Wonder what he was in such a hurry for." Ally glared at the elevator that did _not_ contain her team, rotated her neck with a groan and went to sit down at her desk again.

She was about to return to her game of "how low can you go" with the chair when the elevator sprang to life again.

She refused to get her hopes up a second time, but any hopes she had were dashed instantly when a woman stepped out of the elevator. She was slim and shapely, with long dark hair and eyes tinged with red.

Ally slumped back in her seat. _Guess people here like to get an early start, _she thought.

She looked up again and jumped; the woman had materialized before her without a sound.

"Hello." She said in slightly accented English.

"Um, hi." Ally replied. "Can I help you?"

"Can you tell me if Director Vance is in the building?"

"Yeah, he is. He's up in his office right now." The young agent said dubiously. "But you'll have to wait a minute, another guy just went up there a second ago."

"I cannot wait." And with that cryptic little phrase, the woman flitted up the stairs with silent steps, and was in the director's office before Ally could even blink.

"Jeesh," said Ally thoughtfully, staring up at the now triply occupied office, "doesn't anybody knock anymore?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Quick Note: Gibbs is dead. Completely, totally, not-coming-back-except-in-the-case-of-a-zombie-apocalypse dead. If that makes you sad, well, think how I feel. I'm the one who killed him. :'(**

**Just wanted to get that out of the way. Any feedback is appreciated; if you see a typo, please let me know so that I may commit suicide in shame…or correct it. Y'know, whatever.**

**And now back to the scheduled program already in progress.**

* * *

><p>"-ly?" Ally said incredulously. "You let Baxter drive? No wonder it took you two hours just to get here from the airport. You realize that if DiNozzo decided to come back at any point, we'd have been screwed?" She shook her head violently. "Ian, I thought you at least had a good head on your shoulders, even if you are lacking in the neck department."<p>

Anders towered above the younger, smaller, and much less muscular agent, and deigned to give her a benevolent smile. "I don't know this city at all. What would you have had me do?"

"And he knows it?" She jabbed her thumb in Lex's direction. "He's never been here before!"

"No, he doesn't." Anders agreed calmly. "But as bad as his sense of direction is, his map-reading skills are worse." He let this revelation sink in for a moment.

Ally sighed helplessly. There wasn't anything she could say to that. Best to move on to more important matters. "This is a big case. A huge case, actually."

An extremely disgruntled Lex glared at Ally, then asked the rather flippant question: "What, some big-time politician croaked?" He shrugged. "Or did the SecNav do something unpopular (like open his mouth) and ask for our protection?"

"No, it's a murder case for an NCIS agent. Right here in D.C."

"Uh…" Anders cocked his head to one side, then the other. "Not that I'm not all for solidarity and seeking out justice for one of own, but isn't this completely out of our jurisdiction? How did we even get this assignment?"

"We didn't." Ally said simply. "We fought for it. Or DiNozzo did. He raced up to the director's office as soon as he got here and didn't leave until the case was ours. Seems like more than one team wants in on this case." Her eyes widened suddenly, and before anyone could stop her, she had smacked herself upside the back of the head with a loud **thwack** that resounded throughout the building. Several of the people who had begun to trickle into the offices turned curious eyes in the team's direction. When their stares were echoed by her teammates, Ally felt the need to explain, "I just realized something. The case is so popular that there are two other agents with the director who want to take over. Anyway, let's get to work, shall we?"

She gestured over to the desk she had claimed as her own, the one nearest the main elevator. "The crime scene's been sealed and frozen till we can get there—there are some uniforms from local PD guarding them now—and all DiNozzo really gave me was a name, so all I can really give is some background on the case."

She sat down at the desk with the two men squeezed in behind her, tapping keys and bringing up a file with a picture of an older man with a terrible haircut who looked like happiness was a concept he'd never be able to grasp. The entries were detailed and many; the man had done a lot with the time he had.

"Here we go—Leroy Jethro Gibbs, originally of Stillwater, Pennsylvania. A former Marine, if there is such a thing. A sniper, Special Forces. Awarded the Silver Star." She clicked a different tab, bringing up an online news article. "Left the Service when his wife and daughter were murdered by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel for knowing too much. The guy turned up dead pretty soon afterward. Speculation is he got what was coming to him from a rival gang leader."

"Sure he did," said Lex. "Happens all the time."

"No point looking any further." Anders nodded.

"He joined NCIS—or NIS, actually—and worked crime scenes under a guy named Mike Franks. Moved up to some top-secret stuff in Europe, then came back to start his own team." She giggled suddenly. "The guy got married three more times. All three marriages ended in divorce. "

Anders raised an eyebrow. "A workaholic, perhaps?"

"Who knows? He did get a boatload of medals to keep him company instead." She snorted. "But, I'd have to say that his best-known achievement to date, as far as we're concerned, anyhow, is leading a team containing one Anthony DiNozzo, Jr."

Lex and Anders both did a double take.

"The Boss's Boss?" Lex gasped.

"God. No wonder he tore out of the office so fast." Anders said. "Do we have any idea what happened?"

"All I've got is the incident report that got filed when the case got called in. A civilian worker from this office found him in the basement of his home, apparently shot to death. Once they verified that he was dead and NCIS, they left him alone."

"So he is dead?" Lex asked tentatively. "Not half-dead? Or maybe just mortally wounded?"

"Not unless DiNozzo, the Director of NCIS, a handful of paramedics and the lady who found him in first place were all mistaken." Ally sighed. "I feel really bad for the Boss right now. He looks like he's cracked into little tiny pieces and then pasted himself back together with a glue stick and a couple of paper clips." She slumped back in the chair. "That's it till we get to the crime scene ourselves. Thoughts?"

"I'm impressed," Anders said.

"All I really needed was the name. The information was already in the system," Ally said, blushing ever so slightly.

"Actually, I think he meant it's impressive you managed all this without blowing up the computer," Lex laughed. "I don't think you've ever gone more than a day without breaking yours."

Ally's timid little blush turned into a fierce red stain on her cheeks. "Hey, I can do some things just fine. You realize DiNozzo and I did solve cases before you two geniuses came along, and we had computers back then, too."

"Then why isn't it up on that big screen, instead of making all of us with our considerable bulk," he glanced at Anders, "cram ourselves into this cubicle thingy to look at painfully small words on a smudged-up monitor?"

"I said some things, didn't I?" She said, somehow managing to turn purple. "Not everything. DiNozzo never even let me touch the remote to the one back home." She shuddered. "Not after what happened last time."

"Wow, you had to let DiNozzo take over the tech from you?" Lex let out what could only be called a guffaw. "That's kind of sad."

Ally stood up to all five foot three inches of her height and glared him in the eyes. "Oh, yeah? At least I can tell my rights from my lefts!"

Anders, who had been trying to keep out of the fray, grabbed each of them by the collars of their shirts. "Children, play nice," he scolded them, letting their feet dangle in midair. "We're all on the same team here." And it was in that rather awkward position that the received two visitors.

The man and woman whom Ally had spoken to before had stepped into their little alleyway. Both of them looked shocked at the scene in front of them: a man the size and shape of a small tank held a full-grown man and a petite young woman by their shirts bare inches off of the ground.

"Um," the man said hesitantly. "Is everything okay?" He looked at Anders with no small amount of suspicion, then turned his eyes up to meet Al's.

"Down, Anders, buddy." Al said firmly, silently thanking her lucky stars that DiNozzo had not come in time to see them fighting like eight-year-olds. He had a knack for seeing them at their worst. "Can I help you?" She asked the senior agents once her feet had safely settled on the carpet.

"Yes." The woman this time. "I am Agent Ziva David. This is Agent Timothy McGee. We are looking for the agent in charge of the Gibbs investigation. We were hoping you might be able to tell us where he or she is."

Lex opened his mouth to say something when Ally stomped on his foot. "Can I ask why you need to know?" She said as she tossed a sharp glance in his direction.

"We used to work for Agent Gibbs." The lately identified McGee said. "We were hoping we could assist in the capture of his killer."

"So, if you could tell us where the team working the case stationed, we will let you get back to…" Ziva paused, looking each of them up and down inquisitively. "Whatever it is you were doing."

"You're looking at it." Lex said. "We've been assigned to the case."

"And your team leader?" She asked, looking at each of the agents, all in their twenties yet, with barely disguised disbelief.

"That, you aren't looking at." Anders stepped in. "He's taking care of some business elsewhere in the building. He should be back shortly."

"Does he have a name?" McGee asked expectantly. He looked to each of them in their turn when suddenly—

"Tony!"

"Um, yeah, some people call him that," Lex admitted, "but…" He trailed off as Ally nudged his head in the direction of the elevator. Tony had arrived, and Ziva's surprised cry had drawn his attention.

The three former teammates met halfway and stood in silence for almost a minute, just looking at each other, each face reflecting the look that was the same mixture of profound sadness, loss and grudging happiness. None of them seemed capable of talking.

"Hey, Boss, we're going to go take a tour of the facilities." Anders volunteered quickly, dragging an unwilling Lex along with him.

"But why? We're all here, finally. Shouldn't we…?"

And then Al had apparently run out of patience, because another loud **thwack** split the air.

"So," McGee said, finally breaking the moratorium on speech. "What now?"


	4. Chapter 4

Conscious of the gazes of the other agents in the building, lately come into the office, Tony gestured at the elevator. "Conference room."

Ziva and McGee followed him mutely. As the doors closed, Tony leaned forward and flipped the emergency switch. Darkness fell over them.

"About this case—" said McGee, breaking the silence once again.

Tony raised a hand. "First things first, Tim," he said softly. He opened his arms wide, nudging them forward with a twitch of his head. "Come on."

Ziva nearly collapsed into his arms, resting her head on his chest. McGee followed suit shortly, and the three stood entwined together, supporting one another.

Tony breathed deeply, calmly. He held them close like that for a moment. Finally, he pulled away gently. Ziva's eyes shone slightly in the darkness as she relinquished her grip and whispered a tiny "thank you."

"On to business." Tony said, more firmly now. "What did the director have to say to you guys? Is he letting you join on?" He looked from one downcast face to the other. "No, then. What'd he do, tell you to sit this one out?"

"He told me that he would give me time off to grieve, if I chose," Ziva said in sharp, clipped tones. "But he told me that it would be best for me to return to Florida, at least while the case is still under investigation."

McGee nodded. "He said pretty much the same thing to me, only with the destination being Norfolk and the added bonus that he 'expected better' from me." He snorted irritably. "Apparently I'm 'disappointing.'" He shrugged passively, the whole of his body language seeming to say, "what else is new?"

"So there's no chance of you guys coming on in an official capacity?"

"Ziva yelled at Vance for almost an hour straight. He didn't budge." McGee replied.

Tony shot a quizzical look at the Israeli-American. "Maybe not the best idea, huh?" He let himself smile the same half-smile he'd given the director earlier, the one that looked as if it caused him physical pain. "Still, I'm sure you both have contingency plans. I came here with every intention of investigating this case, whether or not the Toothpick gave me the go-ahead. I hope I'm not wrong in thinking you two would be the same way."

Ziva smirked. "We are practically married to our jobs, Tony. In the past five years, I have worked overtime on enough cases to take a 3-month vacation if I wanted to."

"And since our old team leader was just murdered," McGee added, "We need all the rest we can get."

"To grieve, of course, just like the director said." Tony prodded him, still wearing his hearty grimace.

"Of course," Ziva agreed. "And it would be most suitable, for our peace of mind, if we were to be in Washington, to properly say goodbye to G—to him." She tried to smooth over the hesitation in her voice. "And since our teams have worked nearly as long of hours as we have, it would only be fair for us to give them vacation time—and Washington D.C. is a very popular tourist destination."

Tony sighed heavily. "About that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck anxiously. "I don't know if the whole team thing is such a great idea."

"Why not? Do you not think that our teams are as capable as yours?"

"Yeah, Tony, I thought you wanted us to be a part of this. We aren't just gonna leave our teams out of it."

"I do want you to work the case with me, of course I do!" Tony said hastily. "Of anybody, you have the most right to be a part of this takedown! It's just…" he waved his hands vaguely. "Whoever did this had to be pretty damn good to get the drop on Gibbs, right? And while two heads are better than one, we'll be pretty damned unwieldy if we have a frickin' caravan investigating this case. Besides, Vance isn't stupid. A controlling jerk and as political as they come, but not stupid. He knows we're gonna do this, and if he doesn't, he will soon. And whether or not he decides to look the other way may depend on how efficient our little group actually is. Eight field agents is kind of overkill-ish, don't you think?" His plea over, he stood in front of them, hands outstretched in supplication.

"I understand," Ziva said finally. "You do not want to have too many crooks in the kitchen."

Tony's eyes lit up. "Yes, exactly! Well, not exactly, the phrase is "cooks," but…"

McGee nodded. "We get it. I'll tell my team to stand down. We have enough people here. And I'm sure that your people will get the job done just fine."

"Indeed. But do not be mistaken, Agent DiNozzo," Ziva said, a sudden warning in her voice. "We are not 'your people.' We will work with you as best we are able, but we will not call you 'Boss.'"

"Of course not." Tony agreed. "But my people are my people, so don't expect them to fall into line with whatever you say." There was a slight crackle of tension in the air that both of them seemed to relish; it felt like home. Tony seemed suddenly to remember something, and he turned away, letting the atmosphere slacken. Clearing his throat, he said, "We should probably free up this elevator." He leaned forward to flick the lights back on. "It's time to introduce you to my team."

* * *

><p>Team DiNozzo stood at the ready outside the elevator. "What d'you think they're doing in there?" Lex asked offhandedly.<p>

Al shrugged. "Elevating, how the hell should I know?"

Finally the tell-tale ding was heard, and the team stood up at stiff attention. Tony, Ziva, and McGee filed out. Ally noticed the reddened eyes of the whole group, the determined set to their mouths, the stern tilt of their heads. And Ziva's hand, which brushed against Tony's ever so lightly. Her eyes narrowed. What was that about?

"Okay, guys…these are my old teammates, Ziva David and Timothy McGee."

"We've met," Al observed.

"Well, they're gonna be working this case with us. We need all the help we can get when it comes to a fellow agent, after all." He turned to his former team. "These are my agents, Ian Anders," Anders raised a hand, "Lex Baxter," Lex nodded, "and Ally Duncan." Ally gave a stiff sort of jerk with her head. "We call her Al."

"You call me Al." She said blandly. "Everyone else has the sense to call me Ally or Duncan."

"Got any news for me, **Al**?"

"Yes. I got in touch with the M.E. He says he'll meet us at the crime scene as soon as he finishes cleaning up after his last…job…which he says will be in about five or six minutes."

"All right, intros are over. Go grab your stuff and get ready, we roll out in five." The three obediently returned to their desks. Ally had taken up residence in the desk that had once been Tony's, while Lex sat directly across from her and Anders took McGee's old spot. The desk that Tony had asked them to leave vacant, Gibbs' desk, remained untouched.

"That was not what I expected…" McGee said pensively.

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"It's just that your emails are a little misleading. Don't you think, Ziva?" He prodded the woman.

"Uh, yes…" Ziva agreed. "I especially did not expect there to be a woman."

"She's right, you only ever call her 'Al.' I thought your team was all guys."

"I call her Ally sometimes." He said defensively. "Don't I?" His brow furrowed in thought for a moment.

"You don't. And the way you describe her…as your "right-hand man," I was pretty sure…" McGee let his sentence hang in the air.

"You called her a man, Tony?" Ziva demanded.

"It's a figure of speech!" Exasperated, he explained, "Al's been with me the longest and I rely on her, that's all. I guess I thought it was obvious that she was a woman, so I never bothered to make a distinction."

McGee continued, "And what about Anders?"

"What about him?"

"Well, you told us he was an FBI-trained profiler with extensive knowledge of computer forensics. You said he was your go-to guy for "techie stuff" but that he wasn't much use in a fight."

"Yeah, so?"

"He is a tank," was Ziva's simple answer.

Tony glanced over at the man, a tall, black, and extremely muscular guy who looked like he barely fit in his shirt. The button-down look really didn't suit him. He towered over his co-workers by at least six inches—and in Al's case, by considerably more. His hair was kept shaved close to his scalp, and he had a slow, friendly smile that made a person feel warm inside. He leaned, relaxed, against his desk, but his eyes remained alert.

"You're telling me that guy can't handle himself in a fight?" McGee asked, eyebrows raised.

"He can handle himself, he's just not the best at it. He has no speed, no finesse, and he's kind of a pacifist." Tony laughed. "I mean, yeah, if he hits you, you go down and you don't get up, but he has to hit you first. Lex is really more the 'fighter' type."

Ziva examined the tall, lean man with curly black hair and a five o' clock shadow. He carried himself with a great deal of self-assurance, and his dark brown eyes had probably melted many a woman's heart. But Ziva's eyes spent little time on his face and more on the better-concealed contours of his muscular arms and chest. "I can believe that, I suppose. He appears to be very fit."

"Not to mention the whole 'his entire family's into boxing' thing," said McGee. "I still can't believe you just snatched him from local P.D. without even knowing he was a classically trained fighter."

"It was MMA, actually," said Tony. "Only his father was a boxer. His brothers decided to branch out. Don't surprise the guy if you can help it."

"And then there's Al." McGee shook his head. "I can't believe that tiny little girl is your senior field agent."

"She is not so small," said Ziva. "If her co-workers were not so tall, she would seem average."

"Well, yeah," he agreed, "but I wasn't talking height so much as…everything else."

Ally was the kind of woman you would always want to call a girl—small, skinny and short. She also had a tendency to wear clothes that were too big for her, which only added to the problem. Her wardrobe and physique, combined with her hairstyle, a small, efficient-looking bun at the nape of her neck, made her look rather like a lollipop playing dress-up. She was blonde, blue-eyed, and bespectacled, and seemed to be less than happy about recent developments.

"Well, believe it. She keeps the other two in line and she never complains." Tony looked down at his watch and walked over to the elevator once more, gesturing Tim and Ziva along with him.

"Al! Lex! Anders!" He called, letting the three names blend into one. "You waiting for an invitation?" He allowed himself a small chuckle as he watched them jump up and rush for the elevator.

"He still thinks it's funny," muttered Lex, "can you believe it?"

"It's only been six months…it takes a while for him to let these things go," said Anders evenly. "Don't worry, he'll forget about it soon enough."

"Maybe," whispered Lex. "But it wasn't even that great of a joke to begin with. It makes me wonder about his sense of humor…"

"You know this would never have happened if you hadn't joined the team," Anders accused teasingly.

"You're blaming me?" Lex said in mock indignation. "How is it my fault? I—"

"Oh, shut up, the both of you, and let's just do our jobs." Al snapped. She wasn't in a good mood.

* * *

><p>They rolled up in the crime scene van, following the older agents' town car. They were in a small, clean-cut suburban neighborhood only slightly marred by the presence of a marked cop car tucked just around the corner and the large white medical examiner's van parked out front of a little brick house.<p>

"I guess this is it," said Ally vaguely. She turned the engine off and jumped down from the driver's seat. The other two followed suit quickly, Lex struggling as he slid off the hump.

They trailed after DiNozzo and his companions as they entered the house, pausing a few times as the three seemed to hesitate in their steps. _It must be pretty painful, _thought Ally, _having to see your boss like this after all this time._

Sweeping through the living room and down the steps, they found themselves in a dark, cramped chamber filled up mostly by a large boat. It seemed close to finished but for a large hole that seemed to have been broken out of the side—recently, judging by the splinters that still littered the floor. Some even lay in the pool of congealed blood that leaked from the all-too-still figure on the ground.

"Gibbs," breathed Ziva sadly, looking at the man who was far less intimidating in death than he had been in life. He seemed tired, gray, and much older than she remembered. She longed to touch him, to put him into a more comfortable position, anything.

McGee seemed to hearken back to his earlier days with NCIS as he stood stock-still and felt the blood drain from his face. He hadn't felt queasy over a dead body in years—

"I'm gonna step outside for a moment," he managed to squeeze out before running back up the steps.

"That young man hasn't changed a bit, " came a familiar drawl. "I remember the very first time I ever met him. He couldn't handle death any better then, either." He sighed. "But I suppose it is justified, in this case. I always thought that this is how Jethro would leave us, but I hoped I would be proven wrong." The elderly medical examiner was bent over the body of his late friend, looking nearly as tired and careworn as the man who lay at his feet.

"Ducky?" A bewildered Tony asked.

"The very same." He unbent himself, his back giving a faint crack as he did so. "I was not surprised to hear you had taken over the investigation, Anthony, yet you seem surprised to see me here."

"Well, yeah, Ducky, I'm a little surprised. I heard you retired a last year. I thought for sure we'd be working with Palmer on this one."

"Mr.-oh, I am always forgetting, Dr. Palmer kindly invited me to assist on this case. As a guest."

"The director know about this?" Tony asked doubtfully.

Dr. Mallard waved a hand in the air as if chasing flies away. "The director does not care about something so trivial, I am sure." Tony cocked his head questioningly. "And just in case he does, " he continued, "Dr. Palmer neglected to tell him."

"Well, okay then. Time of death?"

Ducky smiled. "It has been a long time since I last heard that phrase. According to my trusty liver probe, he died somewhere in the range of 20:00 and 23:00. The apparent cause of death is the gunshot wound to his chest, but I will—"

"—know more when you get him back," Ziva finished for him. "It is good to see you again, Ducky." She leaned forward to give him a small hug.

"And you as well, my dear." He looked at her face with no little concern. "And how are you doing?"

"I have been better," she replied with a tight smile. "But I have also been worse."

"Haven't we all?" Ducky patted her shoulder tenderly. "Oh, and this must be your team, Tony," he said excitedly as he caught sight of the three younger agents waiting in the corner of the room. "They remind me very powerfully of some other young agents I once knew." He graced them with his smile and seemed ready to launch into a story to that effect when Tony stopped him.

"I almost forgot about you guys," he said. "All right, Baxter—"

"Canvas the area, see if the neighbors heard or saw anything." Lex nodded. "On it, Boss."

"Anders—"

"Bag and tag, on it," came the swift reply.

"Al—"

"Photos, measurements, and sketches, gotcha, Boss," Al said as she snapped a picture of the hole in the boat.

"Time to go to work."

**And now, in honor of Valentine's Day, here's some advice from Team DiNozzo:**

**_How to deal with love_**

**Anders: Don't settle. Find the person who makes you happy, who you can respect and who respects you. Remember that disagreements are inevitable in any relationship, but that the important thing is to sit down, talk out your problems, and compromise.**

**Lex: Even if the person you like doesn't share your feelings, don't give up. Hearts and minds change with time. Work at it; you may be surprised.**

**Al: Work. Exactly. Love seems like a lot of work. So don't do it. The moment you feel the slightest hint of love festering inside you, crush it with all your might and never let those feelings see the light of day. It'll free up a lot of time and make you a lot less annoying.**

**Anders:…wha-?**

**Lex:…uh-**

**Al: Happy Valentine's Day!**

**This has been advice from Team DiNozzo**


	5. Chapter 5

**WARNING: The following may contain spoilers. If you read this, you will definitely know what happens in this chapter. Continue at your own risk!**

* * *

><p>A curly-haired young man in a blue jumpsuit rattled down the basement steps with a gurney. On the shaky metal apparatus was a long, blue bag.<p>

"Ah, Jimmy. There you are." Ducky called to him. "Let's not keep Jethro waiting."

"Yes, Doctor," Palmer said immediately. He knelt down next to Gibbs' body and began to fit him into the body bag, zipping it up quickly and efficiently. The two worked together to hoist it and its contents onto the gurney.

Tony watched this exchange with a perplexed expression. He knew that Palmer had graduated to medical examiner almost two years ago. Why was he dropping back into the role of the assistant?

He looked around at all the people who had gathered in this small, cramped room. Ziva, who had flown in from Florida overnight, Ducky, who had come out of retirement, McGee, who had just gotten back from a sudden dash to the bathroom (and who had come from the NCIS base at Norfolk before that), and him, Anthony, who had come back from Ohio at a dead sprint and dragged his whole team with him.

It was Gibbs, after all.

"Boss," called Al. Tony walked to where she crouched above the scattered wooden debris. "Looks like there's paint on some of these fragments," she said. "I think there might have been something written on the side of the boat, maybe something the killer didn't want us to see."

"Gibbs sometimes paints the name of the boat," Tony said. "I wouldn't get your hopes up for a dying message." Al nodded. "Anders, go ahead and bag all the tools in here. If one of them matches the cuts in the side of the boat, we might get something off of the handle."

"Got it, Boss." Anders said, leaning over one of the worktables against the wall at the back of the basement. "What about this?" He asked, pointing to an open drawer. Tony looked inside to find the long, streamlined shape of a sniper rifle.

"There's no way it was involved. The shape of the wounds is all wrong. Was it open when you found it?"

"No," Anders shook his head. "It was closed. It doesn't look like it's been disturbed in a long time. It matches the description of Gibbs' registered weapon."

"Yeah, it's his…" Tony rubbed his head thoughtfully. "Where is…?"

Anders stood, waiting for the final verdict. Tony waved a hand absentmindedly. "Leave it," he said. "Focus on the tools."

He looked around the room again. Where was it?

"Hey, where did Ziva and McGee go?" He asked as his eyes roamed through Gibbs' basement.

"Agents David and McGee left some time ago to search the rest of the house," came Al's reply in between shots. "There's a strange little criss-cross pattern in the blood pool on this side; it might be from a sneaker."

"Yeah," Tony said, not really listening anymore. He bounded up the steps to run into Ziva and McGee in the doorway. "Did you find it?"

Ziva shook her head. "No, we did not. We searched the entire house. It was not there."

"It would be consistent with the damage to the body," said McGee. "I think it might be the murder weapon."

"It may be at his desk, still. We haven't searched it yet," Tony mused.

"Yeah, but," McGee started, "this is Gibbs we're talking about. For him to go without a gun is—"

"Impossible," said Ziva. "Not unless he was undercover, which he was not. It is most likely that Gibbs was killed with his own Sig Sauer."

"Let's not rule out any possibilities just yet," Tony cautioned. "Did you find anything else?"

"There was no sign of forced entry, but he always kept his door unlocked, so that doesn't tell us much," said McGee. "It looks like he was still sleeping on the couch."

"The house does not appear to have been disturbed anywhere else. Nothing has been searched, nothing has been moved. It looks the same as it always does." Ziva sighed. "I do not suppose that you have found anything?"

"Al might have found a partial shoe print in the blood," said Tony. "But, aside from the boat being smashed in, not much has changed down here, either."

"Maybe Agent Baxter will have some luck with witnesses," volunteered McGee hopefully.

* * *

><p>"Nothing."<p>

"Nothing?"

Lex shook his head vehemently. "No witnesses, no noise disturbances. Everybody basically just said that this is a quiet neighborhood and Gibbs kept himself to himself. Nobody even knew he had died, or what he did for a living."

"There was one woman," He continued, "the neighbor next door, Mrs. Lancaster—sweet old lady, a widow—said there have been 'incidents' at the house before, but I don't know if they'll be any use…"

"Tell me!" Tony commanded. "Every bit helps."

Lex looked down at his PDA. "Well," he said, thumbing through his notes distractedly, finally giving a small 'Ah!' when he found it, "she says that about six years back, a man was killed on this street, shot down right in front of Gibbs' house. Ambulances and crime scene tape, the whole nine yards. A lot of families moved out right after. That's part of the reason nobody knows Gibbs," he said, meeting DiNozzo's eyes briefly. "Most of the families are new to the area. Mrs. Lancaster's been here for about forty years, though, so she remembers it all. She said there was a rumor that a man even died in Gibbs' house over a decade ago. All sorts of different women…and way back, there was a little girl who used to live there…"

"Stop," Tony sighed. "You were right. None of that helps us. Are we all done here?" He directed this last part to the room as a whole.

Nods and barks of "yeah, boss," let him know that they had gotten all they could from this scene. "All right, let's load up."

He took one last look at the basement, blood, broken boat and all. He remembered the last time he had been here, had talked to Gibbs.

_"Hey, Boss," he called as he walked down the stairs, wearing the broad, open grin of a child._

_ "DiNozzo, I haven't been your boss in years," came the gruff, irritable reply. The silver-haired man was sanding the sides of a newly completed boat. He didn't bother to glance at his lately arrived guest. "What do you want?"_

_ "C'mon, you're not happy to see me?" Tony said, laughing. _

_ Gibbs looked up to fix him with his trademark steely glare. _

_ Tony sobered a bit. "I heard Ducky retired," he said by way of an explanation. "I was in the area—I have a meeting with SECNAV in a couple hours—and I thought I'd drop by."_

_ "That's old news."_

_ "Well, yeah, but you never answer your email, so…" He shrugged. "Abby said it was because of one of your team members…the politician's kid? Sometimes Abby exaggerates, though, so I wanted to get the story straight from the source." He sat down on a foldout chair crammed into a worktable, smoothing out creases in his suit jacket as Gibbs handed him a glass of bourbon._

_ "The source would be Ducky. Why don't you go ask him?"_

_ "Dear old Dr. Mallard just departed on a thirty-day cruise." Tony responded. _

_ Gibbs heaved a tired sigh. "Ducky didn't retire, he quit. And I'm starting to think he's got the right idea."_

_ Tony's eyebrows shot straight up. "It can't be that bad! I mean, I know you and your team don't really get along…"_

_ "Abby?"_

_ "Abby." Tony affirmed. "But, y'know, I thought it would have to get better by now. I mean, a few months under the reign of Leroy Jethro Gibbs should be enough to whip them into shape, and these guys have had years."_

_ Gibbs tossed back a swig of bourbon straight from the bottle, then said, "Well, you thought wrong, DiNozzo. They're just as useless as always." He gave a sideways glance at Tony. "What did Abby tell you, anyway?"_

_ Tony shrugged. "She said you had a coward, a drone, and a sociopath. But like I said, she exaggerates sometimes…"_

_ "That's pretty much it," he said, sounding almost forlorn. "Yesterday, at a crime scene, I told Barnes to go bring the truck around. She came back within about 10 minutes, on foot. I asked her why and she said, 'there was a bee.'" He shook his head in a bedraggled, disbelieving sort of way. "She absolutely refused to go anywhere near it. I finally got Thornes to go get the truck, but the for the rest of the day, Adams kept creeping up behind her and making buzzing noises in her ear. She jumped every time."_

_ "Bees are scary," Tony said, offering him a weak smile. "It could be worse."_

_ "How could it possibly get any worse?" Gibbs slumped back in his seat. "What about your team? You must be pretty good if SECNAV wants to talk to you."_

_ "It's going well," Tony said, grin returning to his face. "I just picked up a second guy, an Ian Anders. I took a page out of your book and snatched him from another agency. "_

_ "Tony, I'm glad to hear you finally got out of that rut," Gibbs said, his expression becoming even more serious. "After all, this is already your ninth team, isn't it?"_

_ "It's only my fourth!" Tony said indignantly as Gibbs face broke into a rare smile._

That was a year ago, and Tony found himself wishing he had visited more frequently. He only ever saw Gibbs when he was "in the area." Now he wouldn't see him at all. He closed the door to the basement and headed outside.

* * *

><p><strong>NEXT TIME, ON THIS: TUNE IN TO MEET THE TEAM THAT RUINED IT ALL!<strong>


	6. Chapter 6

NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. He wasn't quite sure what to do.

On the floor in front of him, there lay a woman. A woman he cared deeply for, whom he wanted to see happy. Her face was inhumanly pale and drawn with exhaustion; blackened streaks beneath her eyes made it clear she had been crying, But for right now, she was asleep. Peaceful.

And it was his job to wake her.

The crate he was carrying under one arm was getting heavy, so he set it down on the lab counter as silently as possible. He crouched down, fighting the urge to tuck a strand of her unkempt hair behind her ear, and sighed.

"Whuzzgoinon?" Abby demanded in a muddled sort of voice as she jerked her head straight up.

"OW!" came the inevitable result as her head smashed into his chin. She rolled over onto her side, clutching her throbbing skull while McGee rocked back and forth in silent agony.

Apparently, her pain subsided first, because she managed to squint up at the agent and demand, "McGee? What are you doing here?"

McGee left off checking his mouth for blood. "Delivering the evidence from Gibbs' house," he said, working his jaw. "Jesus, Abs, I think you might have chipped a tooth."

"How did you find out?" she asked. "You never answered my calls."

He set his mouth into a grimace. "I checked my voice mail."

"Oh." Abby's eyes widened. "Oh, God, Tim! I'm so sorry! It must have been terrible to have to find out like that!" She bit her lip anxiously. "It's just that I was so upset and so scared and so sad, and you weren't picking up your phone, and—"

"It's okay, Abby. I understand." He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Besides, it sounded like it was a million times worse for you."

She shook her head vehemently, inadvertently slapping herself with her hair in the process. "That's no excuse, McGee! I should have kept trying!"

"Abs, it wouldn't have done you any good. I was on a covert assignment all night. I didn't even get a chance to look at my phone until about 6 a.m."

She blinked confusedly. "Then how'd you get here so fast?"

"I was already on my way, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah." She seemed to wilt. "I almost forgot."

"I don't suppose now's the best time for me to say—"

"No. It isn't." She grunted as she pulled herself to her feet, using McGee as her support, then swiped a few stray hairs out of her eyes to get a good look at the box McGee had deposited on her lab table. "Is this it?"

"Tony's asked some of the techs in the basement to recreate the scene. They're trying to put the boat together, too, in case there was a reason the killer smashed it. This is just all the tools, fibers, and other evidence we collected from the crime scene. Plus, Ducky and Palmer have already started on the autopsy, so pretty soon you'll have that…stuff." He finished lamely.

"Okay. I guess I should get started." She began unpacking the clear plastic bags one by one. A full minute passed before she said, "I don't need a babysitter, McGee."

"What?" He asked. "Oh, right. I know."

"So why are you still here?"

"Um, actually," he said haltingly, "I'm supposed to take your statement. To establish a timeline and everything."

"I already gave a statement to the cops who came to the scene." She said it slowly, as if talking to someone not-quite-bright.

"Well, yeah, but, w-we have to take one, too. You know how it is." He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "I-if you're not ready, I can wait until…y'know, until you are." He started toward the door when he felt himself jerked back by his collar.

"I'm fine, McGee." Abby huffed. "Geez, the way everyone's tiptoeing around me, it's like I've got some kind of fatal disease. Now, ask your questions."

"Uh, right." He pulled out his PDA. "When did you last see Gibbs alive?"

"Around 7 o'clock." She answered promptly. "We said goodbye at the elevator, and made plans to meet at a restaurant at 8:30 for," she hesitated slightly, "for my pre-birthday dinner. I went home to get ready. I assumed he was doing the same thing."

"Okay. What led to your discovery of the body?"

"Well, I waited for him at the restaurant till around 10. Then I started getting mad 'cause I thought he'd somehow forgotten about the dinner, even though we'd talked about it earlier. I called his cell and his office phone, in case he'd decided to go back into work for some reason." She paused while she waited for McGee to catch up. "The restaurant was going to start closing soon, so I decided to just go ahead and eat my dinner, then worry about Gibbs.

"I left around 10:30, then headed back to my apartment to take a shower and get changed into something more comfortable. For a while, I considered just going to bed, but I was pretty upset with Gibbs," her voice cracked almost imperceptibly, "so I drove over to his house to give him a piece of my mind."

"And when was that?" McGee broke in.

"It was probably almost 11:45, by then. The door was unlocked, like always, so I let myself in. I called out to him a few times, but he didn't answer, so I figured he must be down in his basement."

"The first thing I noticed," she said thoughtfully, "was the boat. I thought, 'what a weird shadow.' I decided to take a closer look when I realized it was a hole.

"I tripped over him. I didn't see him, lying there on the floor, and my foot got caught up on one of his legs. I almost fell into the boat. I remember thinking that Gibbs would kill me if I messed it up." She let out a nervous giggle. "And then I saw him. He was…so cold...and there was blood. Everywhere." She took a deep breath.

"And then I called you."

_ "Tim! It's Gibbs, he's—oh, God, no—Tim! I think he might be…"_

"But you didn't pick up. And my head wasn't working right, everything was all muddled, and I called Tony…"

_"Hey, there, birthday girl, shouldn't I be the one calling you?" _

_ "Tony, it's Gibbs!"_

_ "Really? 'Cause it sure sounds like Abby." He was laughing, happy. Joking around._

_ "Listen to me!" She pleaded, desperate to make him understand. "Gibbs was shot! He's dead, Tony! _

_ The phone went silent for a moment. Abby wondered if Tony had hung up on her. She was about to try calling him again, when—_

_ "I'm on my way." And then she heard a click, followed by a dial tone._

"And I didn't know what else to do, so then I called Ziva."

_"A-Abby?" Ziva sounded sleepy. "It is very late. Is something wrong?"_

_ And so she told her._

_ "Are you sure?" Ziva asked, fully alert now.  
>"Of course!" Abby snapped, angry at having to repeat herself. <em>

_ "I will leave immediately," came a muffled reply, as if the speaker had stepped away from the phone. Abby could hear the sound of drawers being opened. "Do the police have any information?"_

_ "…the police?"_

"And then I called 911. The cops came in, put crime scene tape up, and took my statement. After that I came here." She looked up at McGee abruptly. "Is that it?"

"One more thing," he said gently, tucking away his PDA once more. He opened his arms wide.

Abby practically tackled him.


	7. Chapter 7

While McGee was busy interviewing Abby, Team DiNozzo (plus Ziva) had returned to the squad room.

"Find out where the members of his team are and bring them in. They might have some idea of what happened." Tony had said briskly.

"Or they might have had something to do with his death," Ziva had agreed. "According to Abby, they did not get along with Gibbs very well."

"On it, Boss." The three had responded in unison before stopping in their tracks.

Tony knocked into Al, almost bowling her over completely. "What is it?" He demanded irritably, pulling her up by her arm and setting her straight again.

"I don't think we'll need to look very far," Anders said simply, gesturing over to the desks, which in the team's absence had been reclaimed by their usual inhabitants.

A taller woman in her mid-thirties with short, dark hair sat where Lex had been, and had dealt with his coat, which he had draped over the chair before leaving, by tossing it into a corner of the cubicle. She appeared to be typing busily at her desk, but kept glancing over at the empty desk to her left anxiously, checking her watch each time.

At Al's desk of choice sat a slightly younger man with slicked-back hair and an oily smile to match. He leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on the desk, and seemed completely content about the absence of the team leader. He had his eyes closed and was bobbing his head to whatever music was playing on his iPod.

Where Anders had been sitting, there was a man who might have been in anywhere from his early forties to his late fifties. He was a squat, short, balding gentleman with a general air of disinterest in the world around him. He, unlike his female counterpart across the aisle, really was absorbed in his work, and seemed not to even notice that his leader had not shown up today.

"A coward, a drone, and a sociopath," Tony muttered.

"What was that, Boss?" Asked Lex.

"Nothing." DiNozzo said, waving his hand dismissively. "Split them up into different interview rooms. Don't tell them what it's about. Agents David, McGee and I will question them separately."

…

"Agent Barnes." Ziva said, offering the woman a pleasant, professional smile. "How are you today?"

"Fine, I guess." She said, jouncing her legs and picking her nails as she did. "Have I done something wrong?"

"Have you?" Ziva asked mildly.

"I don't think so." She said dubiously. "Unless…this isn't about the bee thing, is it?"

"Bee thing?"

"I already explained it to Agent Gibbs." Barnes said earnestly. "It's a phobia. I can't help having a phobia, can I? And it's never affected my work."

Ziva raised a hand to stop her. "It is not about the 'bee thing.'"

"Oh. Good."

And she paused for all of a second before saying, "and a minor psychological problem like a fear of bees is not grounds for dismissal. I've talked to a lawyer about this. Well, he's my uncle, and he mostly deals with corporate contracts, but he's still a fully licensed attorney."

"I understand," Ziva said, trying to soothe the girl, who seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating. "This has nothing to do with your phobia. I simply have a few questions, that is all."

But Barnes was having none of it. "Besides which," she plowed on, "if something's gone wrong with a case or something, you definitely shouldn't be pointing a finger at me. If anybody's to blame, it's Adams. He's the one who screwed everything up last time, not me. But you'll probably give him a pass again, just like before, and get rid of a good, hard-working agent like me just to protect him. I mean, maybe my field work isn't the best of the best, but if Agent Gibbs doesn't like it, he should tell me to my face, instead of sending some stranger to investigate—"

"Agent Gibbs was found murdered last night!" Ziva shouted suddenly.

"Oh." Barnes said. "So this isn't about—"

"NO! It has nothing to do with bees!" Agent David said in exasperation.

…

The round-faced agent settled into the metal chair with a slight creaking sound. "May I ask what this is about." The way he said it, monotonously, without the slightest inflection, made it sound more like a mundane greeting than a question.

"I'd prefer to ask the questions just now, Agent Thornes," McGee told the older man. "When was the last time you saw Special Agent Gibbs?"

"Sometime last night, around 6. He gave us all an early evening, considering that it was Friday. Although he's been allowing us to leave early fairly often in the past few weeks, so I suppose it was a normal enough time."

"He's been letting you go early?" McGee was surprised. "Do you know why?"

From the look of it, Thornes had never given it much thought. He shrugged and said, "I guess we've just been getting things done earlier than usual."

"Um, okay." McGee said, one eyebrow raised. That wasn't it. "How would you say your relationship is with Agent Gibbs?"

"Good, I suppose. He is more demanding than some of my previous bosses, but I believe I perform what tasks he requires of me satisfactorily. I have never had a complaint from him. I follow all protocol and rules to the letter, so there cannot be anything with which he can reproach me."

"What about your teammates?" The next question came. "How did they get along with Gibbs?"

"Well, Adams is rather sloppy. He is young, and tends to act without thinking. He and Agent Gibbs do not always see eye-to-eye. I would say that their relationship is rather strained. He would do better, I think, to learn the rules as I have done, and to be more cautious whenever possible."

"Barnes is not very skilled at fieldwork, and Gibbs is somewhat dissatisfied with her at times. But that is to be expected. She is a woman, after all, and is much better suited to the simple, repetitive activities one must perform at one's desk. I would even hazard to say that her skills with a computer are marginally better than my own."

It took everything McGee had to stop himself from hitting the man.

…

Agent Adams entered the interview room without a fuss and resumed the position he had been in at his desk. When Tony sat down opposite him, he didn't acknowledge the older agent at all.

**BANG! **Tony slammed his hand flat on the table, making the whole thing shake and causing Adams to topple over in his chair with a clatter that resounded throughout the room.

"What the hell?" Adams shouted as he jumped to his feet and immediately tripped over the fallen piece of furniture. "Goddammit!"

"Got your attention now, huh, cool guy?" Tony smirked. He leaned over and offered the now thoroughly embarrassed young man a hand up. Adams ignored it.

"What do you want?" He demanded after he had placed the chair in its proper place and himself in the proper upright position.

"I have a few questions I'd like you to answer."

"Don't I get a lawyer first?" He said irritably.

"It's just a quick little interview. If you want to pay for a lawyer to come down here and hold your hand, that's up to you." Tony's smile was almost sweet.

"Just ask your damn questions."

"When was the last time you saw Special Agent Gibbs?"

"The old man?" Adams shrugged. "Around 6 last night, I guess. He told us we could go home."

"6 p.m.? Is that when he usually let you leave?" Tony asked.

"Nah, but he's been letting us go early for the past couple of weeks. He let us leave at 5 on Thursday."

"Do you know why he's been releasing you so early?"

"We've had a pretty light case load. Nothing major." He grinned. "I think the Director finally stopped trusting the geezer with the important stuff. Might be shopping around for a new team leader, you know? Good thing, too. It's about time we got some new blood. Especially now that we finally got rid of that fossil, Mallard. He totally screwed up a case a few months back, and then he tried to cover his ass by pinning it on me. I figure it's only a matter of time before Gibbs' career goes the same way."

"So you and Agent Gibbs don't get along?"

"He doesn't get along with anybody. You'd know what I mean if you met him. Always growls at us to do all the grunt work, then takes the best stuff for himself. Why do you want to know? He do something wrong?"

…

"I hate them." Ziva announced. "All of them."

"Who'da thought that Thornes was a closet narcissist/chauvinist?" McGee shook his head in disbelief. "From what Abby said, I always figured he was just really boring. You know, the type of guy whose job is his whole life."

"You think Thornes is bad?" Ziva scoffed. "I spent the last thirty minutes listening to Barnes list every physical and psychological problem she has. Joint problems and skin conditions and the tendency to faint at the sight of blood! How can you become a federal agent if you cannot be around blood? The only redeeming quality she has is her knowledge of foreign language, and she would probably only use that skill to explain her fear of bees in 12 different languages."

"Is she allergic to them? Allergies to bee venom can be pretty volatile, even fatal." McGee pointed out.

"But she is not allergic! It is probably the only allergy she does not have!" Ziva snorted in frustration. "And what about Adams, hmm? He is completely full of himself and does not have the slightest bit of compassion for those around him. I do not know how Gibbs was able to stand it."

"Well, they are pretty terrible agents," McGee agreed. "But I don't think Thornes had anything to do with Gibbs' murder. He has no idea that Gibbs had any problem with his work, is totally self-absorbed, and seemed genuinely irritated that Gibbs had died. Mostly because it's inconvenient for him to have to acclimate to a new boss, but still."

"Does he have an alibi?" Tony wanted to know.

"Well, no. He says he was home alone all night. There's no way to verify it."

"Then we can't rule him out just yet. What about Barnes?" He asked Ziva.

"She is too nervous and according to her file, she is barely able to pass her firearms certification every year. She would never be able to pull it off. Also, she says that her husband will be able to verify that she was home, with him, all last night. She assures me that he is a very light sleeper, and would know instantly if she had left."

Both McGee and Ziva turned to Tony expectantly.

"What?" He asked.

"Well, this is usually the part where you say something," McGee said.

"Like how you do not believe that she has a husband," Ziva agreed.

"Why," Tony asked quizzically. "Do you think she might be lying about it?"

"No…" Ziva said. "Her file clearly says that she is married."

"Then let's move on." Tony said. "Adams says he went clubbing all last night with five of his friends. I'm having Anders track them down right now. Although he hates Gibbs, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, I doubt he's our guy. He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him Gibbs had died. From what they've told us, though, Gibbs had been acting differently for about the past two weeks. For whatever reason, his caseload has been a lot lighter. I'm going to talk to the director, see if he knows why.

"I'd like you, Ziva, to talk to Palmer and see if maybe he noticed anything important about Gibbs' behavior. It's unlikely, but it couldn't hurt to check. McGee, I was hoping you could help the other members of my team go through the case files as far back as a month. They might tell us what changed."

Although his wording was polite, the tone of his voice made it clear that he expected full obedience. The three split up, each walking away in a different direction.


	8. Chapter 8

"That's it." Anders gave a relieved sigh as he set down his phone for the last time. "All five friends, along with three different camera angles, put Adams in a D.C. nightclub from 10 at night till 2 in the morning. He couldn't have done it." He looked over at his fellow team members.

Ally was busy sifting through case files she'd gathered from the team's file cabinets, while Lex was typing away at Gibbs' computer.

"Where did Agent McGee go?" Anders asked.

"Hmm? Oh, he went down to records to see if we missed anything," Ally said, waving a hand absently over the heap of files she was organizing. "He said he'd be back in a minute. That was fifteen minutes ago."

"I think Duncan makes him uncomfortable," Lex said in a confidential stage whisper.

"He deserves to be uncomfortable," Ally said, a slight touch of menace in her voice. "How long's he been an agent, and he doesn't even know rule eight yet?"

"But how do you really feel?" Lex quipped.

"I think he seems like a competent, intelligent agent." Anders volunteered as he stood up to join the other two.

He seemed to be considering how to lower himself down next to Ally with displacing the paper mountain or the agent herself when Lex stood up and waved the senior agent into his seat, settling himself on the ground instead. He reached into the files and promptly let out a hiss of pain.

"Paper cut," he said with a wince. "Yeah, he seems like a good guy, and the boss obviously trusts him. You can't stay mad at him forever," he directed this comment at Ally, "it's not like he meant anything by it."

"As long as he doesn't do it again, I don't really care." Al shrugged. "I don't have anything against _him_."

"I thought so," Anders swiveled in his chair to look at her. "You don't like Agent David, do you?"

"Why not?" Lex asked, surprised. "A strong female agent? And DiNozzo obviously likes her." He snickered. "Maybe even more than likes. She's not bad to look at."

"This isn't the time or the place. Romance is meant to be kept private." Ally said irritably.

"Yeah, yeah." Lex rolled his eyes. "Rule 12, I know."

"And suddenly I have to like everyone the boss does?"

"You usually do," Anders observed.

"Why don't we all just get back to work? McGee should be back any second."

...

McGee rounded a corner toward the elevator and nearly ran headlong into Ziva. He stopped himself short and fell over onto the ground. Ziva laughed and reached down to help him up.

"That was very graceful, McGee," she said, pulling him up by his arm.

"Sorry," he said as he straightened out his suit jacket. "I got caught up in Records and forgot I was supposed to be helping Tony's team up in the squad room. The trip was a bust, anyway. Did you find out anything from Jimmy?"

Ziva pressed the elevator call button. "No, I did not. It was the same story that the other agents gave. He started receiving a lighter caseload two weeks ago, which is pretty much the last time Palmer saw him, since none of the new cases were homicides."

"What about the autopsy results?" McGee asked hopefully as the two stepped into the elevator.

"Not ready yet. They have barely gotten started." Ziva sighed. "As much as I respect Jimmy, I wish Ducky had still been here. He would have been able to tell us what was bothering Gibbs."

The doors opened on the main floor. Tony stood just in front of the elevator, head bent over his PDA. He looked up to see his fellow agents.

"Good, you're here. I was just about to come looking for you." He stepped aside to let them walk in front of him. "Anything new?"

"Nothing." McGee said. Ziva nodded in agreement.

"Jimmy has not worked a case with Gibbs in weeks," she said. "There is nothing he can tell us."

"That's because Gibbs asked not to be given any homicides." Tony said. "According to the director, he said he wanted to take a break from his usual cases, go on a lighter rotation."

"That doesn't make any sense," McGee said. "Gibbs doesn't take breaks."

"Well, he took one." Tony said shortly. "As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure he was thinking of quitting. Permanently, this time."

"If he was, he did not tell anyone here." Ziva pointed out. "Did he give a reason for why he wanted this break?"

"Sure he did. I just forgot to mention it." Tony turned to his team, who had all stood at attention upon his arrival. "Do you have anything for me?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid," Anders said. "Although I have cleared Agent Adams from suspicion. There's no way he could have done it."

"You didn't get anything out of the case files? No notes, nothing?"

"We just started," Lex said helplessly.

"Well, that makes it all better." DiNozzo threw up his hands. "Why don't you let me know when you're ready to start doing your jobs." He stalked away, making a beeline for the men's room as he did so.

Ziva hesitated for a moment, then gave a frustrated huff and went after him. "Tony!"

"Um," McGee seemed to be at a loss for words. "Uh, why don't we all go back to looking at those case files, shall we?"

…

Tony was busy slamming open stall doors to make sure the bathroom was empty when Ziva entered. He looked up at the sound of the door swinging shut.

"Do you have a problem with gender confusion?" He asked. "'Cause I swear you're in here almost as much as I am."

"You need to calm down, Tony." Ziva said gently. "This case has barely begun, and you are already so impatient."

"And what reason would I have to be impatient?" He asked, that same painful grimace on his face once again. "My boss, the guy I looked up to like a father, just got gunned down in his own home, and nobody here has any idea what happened. I forced my way in on this case, I fought for it, and what have I got to show for it? Nothing. Nada. Zilch." He slammed his hand against another stall door. "A monkey could do a better job."

"Tony, we are all upset about Gibbs' death. But there is still time. We have not even received the analysis on the physical evidence yet." Ziva reached forward, trying to place her hand on Tony's shoulder, but he pulled away. Her eyes narrowed, and she let her hand fall back at her side. "What we do not have time for is you throwing a temper tantrum in the men's room."

"Another thing I'm doing wrong." Tony said with an angry smirk. "Thank you for that, Ms. David. You always did have a knack for bringing me down."

"You need to stop this." She snapped angrily. "This is no time for you to start pitying yourself, simply because you have not made as much progress as you would like." He looked away, but she grabbed his head and forced him to look her in the eye. "You are not Gibbs!"

"Thanks for that," he said drily. "I kinda figured it out for myself, seeing as how I'm not lying on a metal slab in a basement, but it's always good to hear—"

"Shut up, Tony, and let me finish." She cut him off, almost shouting now. "You are not Gibbs. But that does not mean that there is anything wrong with who you are. You are a good agent. One of the best, if your recent record is to be trusted. To start doubting yourself now will not help anyone." Her tone softened slightly, and she released her grip on his face. "Just do what you always do, and everything will be fine."

To her surprise, Tony started laughing.

"What?" She asked, somewhat disgruntled at his less-than-serious response to her heartfelt speech.

"It's just funny, how little has changed." He said, grinning a genuine grin now. "I mean, we haven't seen or talked to each other in like, three years, but everything's pretty much the same. You still barge into the little boys' room whenever you feel like it, and I still come in here anyway, knowing you'll be right behind me."

"About that," Ziva began.

"It's old news." Tony brushed it aside. "I'm over it, you're over it. Let's just move on." He paused thoughtfully. "How does Thomas feel about this, by the way? Does he know we're working this case together?"

"He does not," Ziva sighed. "We are no longer together."

"You're divorced? Since when?" Tony asked, shocked.

"Two years ago." She said it matter-of-factly. There was no anger, no sadness. It was just what had happened.

"So it wasn't—"

"Because of you?" Ziva shook her head. "Of course not. It never had anything to do with you. The things I said then were…ridiculous," she said, looking up into his eyes earnestly, "and I am sorry to have said them."

He gave a tentative sort of half-smile, and reached down to tuck a hair behind her ear. "Like I said, bygones."

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom burst open to reveal a very nervous-looking Lex. "Uh, sorry," he said, when he took in the scene before him. He stepped back outside, pulling the door shut behind him.

"I guess we should go back to work," Ziva laughed, breaking the silence even further.

"I wanted to ask you…but it can wait," Tony said. "After you," he gestured to the door.

They found Lex standing stock-still against the wall outside, looking as though he feared for his life.

"So?" Tony asked expectantly.

"Boss?"

"What did you come in to tell me?" He said it slowly, as if talking to a rather stupid person.

"Oh, right. Well, we found something."

"What kind of something?" Ziva prompting him helpfully.

"Kind, ma'am?" He quailed at the sudden flash of anger on Ziva's face.

Tony placed a restraining hand on his one-time partner's shoulder before saying, "A big something, a little something?"

"Big, sir. I mean, Boss." Lex gulped. "Or…maybe medium?"

It was all DiNozzo could do to keep from laughing at the poor man. "Lead the way," he said with a grin.

The three returned to the squad room where McGee, Anders and Duncan were waiting anxiously. Ally and Anders relaxed when they saw his expression.

"I hear you've got something big for me?" Tony said.

"More medium," Ally said. "But it's definitely something."

"Okay then," Tony perched himself on the edge of a desk, shifting slightly to get more comfortable.

"Campfire."


	9. Chapter 9

Я сейчас в другой странне, и время здесь очень...другая. Хочу, чтобы вам нравились эта история! И, чтобы вы сказали, eсли вам она нравиться!

"Campfire."

At the sound of this most strangely powerful of words, Al, Lex, and Anders arranged themselves in a rigid semicircle around DiNozzo and began to deliver what sounded like a prepared speech about their findings.

"Well, we were looking for anything strange," Al began, "and we found a case that happened about the time Gibbs asked for time off—just over two weeks ago, on the fifteenth. It was strange in that it was a case that, normally, NCIS would never take." She slid a folder along the desk in front of Tony before ceding the floor to Anders.

"Kyle Gett is a Navy dependent who attends a middle school on a Navy base. On the eleventh of last month, he was attacked and severely beaten by several of his classmates—a group of seven boys who surrounded him in the hallway and began to punch him repeatedly."

There was a momentary pause while Lex figured out that he was up next.

"Uh…we know this because…uh…there were at least ten witnesses, three of which chose to take video of the attack on their cell phones and one of which was a substitute teacher who arrived after the attack had already begun and tried to stop it. He was rushed to the hospital after coughing up blood and it was reported that he had two broken ribs and internal bleeding in addition to a number of superficial scratches and bruises." Slightly out of breath, he nodded to Al.

Anders had placed a reassuring hand on Lex's shoulder when DiNozzo asked, "So why were we the ones to take it? A schoolyard fight has local police written all over it."

"Politics, plain and simple, " Al jumped in. "Practically every day, there's a new story about a kid somewhere being bullied and cyber-bullied—remember the second grade boy who committed suicide to escape his tormentors?" She shrugged. "Suddenly a school on a naval base was under serious scrutiny from the media and concerned parents. It was the latest headline in school administrative incompetency—even better, it was a military installation."

Anders tagged in. "To try and convince the public that the Navy was taking the matter seriously, someone higher up the food chain demanded that NCIS be brought in for the investigation. I looked up some press releases—they touted Gibbs' awards, his achievements, even his record in the Corps. They wanted everyone to think that they were using their best men, even if it was an open-and-shut-case."

"I'm sensing a 'but,'" said Tony.

"But," Lex continued, "it wasn't. Further examinations of the victim showed that the most severe injuries—the broken ribs and several bruises to his kidneys—predated the attack. What's more, they couldn't have been made by twelve-year-olds." He poked a finger at the autopsy report in the open file on DiNozzo's desk. "Whoever hurt that kid struck several high-impact decisive blows. It had to be someone older and larger, with enough know-how to avoid leaving obvious marks—"

"Like maybe his father, Captain Andrew Gett?" Ziva offered as she leaned over Tony's shoulder, hand brushing his ever so slightly as she used a finger to guide his eyes to the information about Andrew Gett.

Al smoothly snatched the folder off the desk. "Exactly. As usual, the first place one should look is the family members. His dad has the training and the opportunity. But," she slammed the file shut, "That would open a whole new set of doors that the Navy didn't like. The kids' lawyers could argue that they weren't the original cause of the injuries. The Navy had originally hoped to make an example of the kids and have them charged to the fullest extent of the law—instead, they could get off with a minor misdemeanor and some community service. Not to mention the media focus would switch to a decorated naval officer who likes to beat his kid and let schoolchildren take the blame. The Navy would look terrible." She shook her head in mock despair.

DiNozzo cast Al a bewildered look, empty hands hanging in the air as he watched her tuck the case file securely under her arm. "So what, they ordered a cover-up?"

"Yup!" McGee chimed in. "Anders and traced the order back to the very top; SECNAV." He paused for a moment as every person in the room rolled his or her eyes in response. "Yeah, well, some things never change," he agreed. "On his orders, the kids got an out-of-court settlement for a reduced sentence, new-evidence-unseen, and the case was 'closed' as of the fourteenth."

Tony gave a low, thoughtful whistle. "There's no way Gibbs would let that slide. An abusive father?" He shook his head. "No wonder he asked for time off. The job was never just about the job for him; it was about the people. But…"

"Two weeks?" McGee pointed out.

"It is hard to believe it would take Gibbs more than one day to resolve that problem," Ziva nodded. "Or that such a cowardly man could kill him."

"There has to be something more to this." Tony said. "Something that would make him leave early every day, that would make him vulnerable to this kind of scumbag. In any event, we have to approach this carefully. No direct confrontations."

Team DiNozzo shared a conspiratorial glance. They knew what that meant.

Suddenly, the phone on Tony's desk began to ring.

"Abby?" he pounced on the phone. "Abs? Do you have something?"

The other agents strained to catch something in the muffled response.

"Okay, we're on our way." He tossed the phone back into the cradle. "Come on, let's go!" His face split into a grin as he raced over to the elevator. Ziva and McGee slipped inside as well with Team DiNozzo on their heels.

"Wait," Tony held out a hand to stop them from entering. "Sorry guys, but Abby's lab has only so much room and we wouldn't want to crowd her. I can take one of you guys." He pointed to each of them in turn. "Eeny, meeny, miny, Al." He pulled her into the elevator by the wrist and pushed the "Door Close" button.

"Hey!" Lex yelped. "I call favoritism!"

"Call it whatever you want," Al said with a lazy wave at her partner. "See you later."

**Next time: Forensicnessity!  
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	10. Chapter 10

**Hello again.**

As the elevator doors closed, Tony leaned down to Ally's ear level and said, "Don't let it go to your head. You just happen to take up the least amount of space." Ally just shrugged.

"Tony, there is plenty of room in Abby's lab for all of us," Ziva pointed out, "even with Agent Anders. Why…?"

"I didn't wanna overwhelm Abby with too many new faces," He admitted. "She's in a pretty dark place right now, and I don't want to make things any harder on her. Still, my guys are going to be working the case, and she needs to know that. I just want to ease her into it."

"How did she sound on the phone?" McGee asked.

"Almost normal, actually," Tony said. Suddenly, he smacked himself in the head. "Dammit!"

"Uh," McGee said, startled, "What's wrong?"

"I forgot her CAF-POW!" He shook his head. "It's been so long, I just…"

The elevator doors opened at last, and the four agents filed out. Ally was the first to ask—

"What's that sound?"

The telltale wail of punk music drifted out into the hallway through the open doorway.

"Abby's music," said Ziva. "Perhaps she is feeling better." Cautiously, the group stepped inside.

Abby had her back turned to them, but as soon as she heard them enter, she twirled around to face them. Her makeup was impeccable, her pigtails fully intact, and her smile was almost frighteningly wide.

"HI!" She half-shouted. "Ooh, let me turn down my music," she continued as she skipped into the other room.

Ziva's eyes settled on the trash can under Abby's workstation. "I do not think you need to worry about the CAF-POW!, Tony," she said, pointing at the three large red cups that had already been emptied. A fourth sat on the lab table in the middle of the room.

_Well, _Tony thought, _I suppose there are worse ways to cope._

Abby skipped back into the room and skidded to a stop directly in front of Ally. "You must be Al!" She said excitedly. "Tony's told me a ton about you."

Ally winced, then turned to offer her superior a long-suffering look. "Have you ever talked about me with my real name?"

"Y'know, I don't think I have, " Tony said wonderingly.

"So that's not your real name?" Abby chattered happily. "I always thought Al was a weird name for a girl, but then again every name is a weird name to somebody, I mean did you know that my name, Abby, by the way, actually sounds just like the Korean word for dad?"

"Um, okay," Ally said, slightly bewildered. She held out a hand to the taller woman. "It's nice to meet you, Abby. My real, full name," she tossed a glare back at the agents behind her, "is Ally Duncan. Only the Boss Man over there calls me Al."

"Hmmm…" Abby said wonderingly. "Is that because he's the only one that wants to, or because he's the only one you want to?"

"Actually, I'm not sure yet," Ally smirked, getting into her stride with Abby's rather strange line of questioning. "I might decide to make a thing out of it later."

"You're a lot shorter than I expected," Abby continued at her breakneck pace. "I couldn't tell from the picture. Of course, I should know better than anybody how useless a picture for that sort of thing. Without a point of reference, you can't tell how big anything is in a crime scene photo. But now it makes me curious about the other two members of your team." She turned her attention to Tony, now. "Where are they by the way? I want to see if they match the pictures you sent me."

"Uh…" Tony had begun to explain when McGee cut him off.

"Wait a minute," he said suddenly. "You sent Abby pictures of your team?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "So?"

"You never sent me any pictures!"

"Well, Tim, you never asked," Tony said evenly.

"I sent you photos of my team," McGee said irritably. "Usually that means you're supposed to reciprocate."

"Oh," Tony's brow crinkled a bit. "I thought those were just for bragging purposes."

"Bragging? About what?"

"Well, you're on an all-girl team, McGee."

"What—?" McGee sputtered. "I'm a guy, Tony."

"You know what I mean," Tony waved a hand lazily. "You have two very attractive young women working under you."

Ally snorted in the background.

"I bet you sent Ziva pictures," McGee accused him. "I try to keep in touch with everybody on the team, and…"

"Well, you'd lose that bet, because Ziva…" he trailed off, consternation clear on his features.

"Also did not ask for any team photos," Ziva finished lightly.

"Right." Tony hastily agreed.

"AHEM!" Abby interjected into a rather awkward silence.

"Sorry, Abs, what was the question?" Tony turned his attention back to the forensic tech.

"Where are the other two members of your team?" She asked.

"Oh, they're still up in the squad room," he said vaguely. "You know, running down leads on a possible suspect, setting up for a potential stakeout, the usual. You can meet them later, if you want."

"A stakeout?" McGee asked. "Since when?"

"Huh?" Tony shifted his attention back to his fellow agent somewhat confusedly. "What did you think I meant when I said we needed to approach the investigation indirectly?"

"That we would discuss methods of indirectly investigating the suspect," Ziva volunteered.

"…Like a stakeout?" Tony said weakly.

"That would be one option, yes." Ziva said.

"The point is, we're supposed to decide this stuff as a team, Tony," McGee said.

Tony thought he felt a headache coming on. "Okay, fine. My bad. Won't happen again. Now if we could please pull together and focus for just a second," he absently rubbed his temples, "What do you got, Abs?"

The moment the question left his mouth, he regretted it. McGee shoved an elbow into his side and Ziva hissed a reproachful, "Tony!"

Abby's eyes shined for a moment, and her smile wobbled ever so slightly, but a moment passed and her happy façade settled back into place.

"Well," she turned to face her computer and gave a sweeping gesture toward the large monitor on the back wall. "I managed to eliminate a ton of fingerprints. Most of them belonged to Gibbs, obviously, but a few were mine, and some of them belonged to his goddaughter and her mom. There were a few older ones belonging to Tony, too," she suddenly turned back to smirk at him. "Don't worry, though, your alibi is airtight this time."

Tony gave her his best I'm-not-amused face and she went on. "I found two distinct sets of prints that don't have any owners that I could find. I ran them through the armed forces and law enforcement personnel databases, just incase they were old friends or work associates. No hits. I'm running them through AFIS now." The monitor reflected her words with a continuously flashing picture of a bright green fingerprint as it was compared to different files.

"As for ballistics, the culprit was definitely Gibbs' gun." She pressed a few keys and the screen changed to an image of striation patterns. "I matched it to a few of his on-the-job shootings. It's his Sig, all right. Not that that helps us much," she sighed. "For all we know his gun is at the bottom of the Potomac right now. I love saying that name, don't you? Potomac, Potomac, Potomac—"

"Abs."

"Moving on." Abby turned around to pick an evidence bag out of a plastic bin on her table. Inside were shards of wood from Gibbs' boat. "There's a small amount paint on these, but not much. There's definitely some sort of design carved into it, though. My guess is he hadn't finished the paint job yet. It's smashed up pretty badly, and there's a lot of splintering, so it's gonna take a while for me to put it together." She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I'm thinking of asking Jimmy to help me out. He's a little down since Ducky took over the case. I think he feels like he isn't doing enough. Plus he's good at puzzles." Suddenly her eyebrows jumped straight up. "Ooh, before I forget, Ducky told me to tell you to come see him once you're done here."

"Will do, Abby." Tony assured her. "Is that it?"

"Huh? No!" She shook her head vehemently. "See, I analyzed the damage to the boat. I'd say we're looking at an ordinary hammer. I tried to match it to one of the hammers you brought me from the garage, but no dice. Of course, Gibbs has," her mouth twitched, "had about a million hammers, so it's very possible that the killer got it here and then decided to dump it along with the gun." She raised the bag a bit higher for the team's inspection.

"Lucky for us, taking a normal hammer to a well-built boat like that is slow work, not to mention dangerous. The murderer left a little bit of himself behind." She tapped a fingernail on a bloodstained piece of wood. "At first I thought it was transfer from the blood pool on the ground, but when I looked back at the crime scene photos, this piece was nowhere near the blood. I did a quick check for type, and this is definitely not Gibbs'. I have the DNA running through the system now, but on the very large chance that I don't get a match," her voice fell into a harsh growl, "I'll have the profile ready for comparison when you bring this bastard in."

Perking up once again, she turned back to her computer screen and pulled up a shot of the partial footprint from Gibbs' basement. "The good news is, I found a match for the tread. The bad news is, it's one of the most popular treads in America." She plopped herself down on her stool with a sigh, then turned the monitor toward them to show them a picture of a very familiar shoe. "It's a Converse, guys. That's where it gets a little weird. These shoes are mostly marketed toward teens and hipsters." She scrunched her mouth to one side. "Maybe the murderer is a teenage hipster."

"Abby, what on Earth is a 'hipster'?" Ziva asked.

"You're kidding, right?" Tony shook his head. "Well, thanks, Abs. You did great work." Without a second thought, he leaned forward to place a kiss on the top of her head. "I'd give you a CAF-POW!, but I think you're pretty well stocked up." Abby smiled sheepishly.

They all started to head out when Abby jumped up from her seat and shouted, "Wait!" When she had gotten their attention, she announced, "Not until I get a hug from everyone."

"Abby..." McGee said.

"Don't 'Abby' me!" She ran forward and seized Tony around his mid-section, squeezing until he groaned. "Life is too short," she hugged Ziva with less force, "to be skimping on hugs, McGee," she squeezed him tighter than she had Tony.

Then, she turned to face Ally, who would have been perfectly happy to be forgotten and who took on the appearance of a deer caught in headlights. Tony winced on her behalf, knowing that Al was a firm believer in exchanging hugs only with immediate family members. "Abs," he started to warn her off, but was surprised to see Ally shake her head.

The girl accepted the hug gingerly, then followed the others into the elevator for a trip down to Autopsy. She had a slightly dazed look in her eye.

"That was pretty nice of you," Tony said.

"The woman is clearly drowning her sorrows in caffeine," she responded stiffly. "I felt that she deserved a little leeway."

"Well, if you were feeling really generous, you could have hugged her back." Tony grinned.

"Let's not get crazy," Ally shivered at the thought.

**See you next time. Please feel free to review. Thanks to everyone who's done so (and alerted) in the past.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Quick note: This story is chiefly a team-as-family casefic. This means that any romance will occur as a lesser subplot. Right now, I intend to focus more on the solution to the case and on the interactions of the team after a long period of estrangement. I appreciate reviews greatly. **

Team Gibbs plus Ally exited the elevator at the basement level and passed through the automatic doors accompanied by a hiss of air.

"Anthony, Ziva, Timothy." Came the Scotsman's voice, a mixture of pain and pleasure in his tone. He stood over a metal whose occupant was covered with a sheet, and Dr. Palmer hovered in the background. "I wasn't sure when you'd be coming by." He paused a moment, looking past his old friends to the somewhat diminutive youngest agent.

Before they could go through the whole process of introductions again, Tony jumped in with, "What've you got for us, Duck?" Even as the phrase left his lips, he felt the urge to head-slap himself. Years of "turning into Gibbs" when he wasn't around were not paying off. Belatedly he added an "y," and then continued, "because most of Abby's stuff is work-in-progress. We could really use some definitive results."

"I'm afraid I won't be much help there, Anthony," came Ducky's tired reply. "I can tell you that Jethro ate some form of takeout for lunch, that he drank rather more heavily than he should have, and that he died between 8 and 10 p.m.—I managed to narrow the time down a bit more." As he talked he seemed to avoid even looking at the concealed figure, Ally noticed. In fact, he wasn't the only one. None of the agents spared a glance for their former boss' corpse, even as they spoke about his death.

"As for new information," Ducky went on, "there are no defensive wounds, no flakes of skin under his nails, no fingerprints and no blood—excepting his own, of course. I would hazard a guess that his killer either knew him and was someone he did not consider a threat or somehow surprised him. The bullet struck him in the chest, very close to his heart. He bled out very quickly, in a matter of seconds. He wouldn't have felt any pain." He said the last sentence with a slight inflection of hope, an offering to make his fellow mourners feel better. The eyes that met his made it very clear that the attempt, while appreciated, was unsuccessful.

"Have you got any suspects?" He asked, changing the subject.

"One," McGee said. "A naval officer Gibbs suspected of abusing his 12-year-old son. We're planning on staking him out."

Tony's eyebrows shot up. "We are, are we?"

"Yes," Ziva agreed with McGee. "Starting tonight."

"Then I shall let you return to your planning," Ducky said. "I will be here…going over my findings once again." He turned to face the table with apprehension, listening for the tell-tale hiss before beginning to speak. "I must say, Jethro, you did quite a fine job with them. I think you would be very proud to see the way they're handling your case. Now, if you would only give us a few clues as to who did this to you…" He trailed off, pulling back the sheet just enough to reveal Gibbs' face.

"Um…" A quiet voice pierced his thoughts. "Dr. Mallard?"

Replacing the cloth with a sudden start, he turned to find Ally standing just within the door.

"You can call me Ducky," he said automatically. "Everyone does."

"Ducky, then." Ally smiled. "I was just hoping…wondering if I might ask you something."

"As you wish." Ducky returned her smile. "Perhaps afterward you can answer a few of mine."

"Well," Ally traced a pattern on the floor with her foot. "I know how important it is to keep an objective view of a case…to not get too attached. If you let yourself get too close to the victim, you'll end up looking for revenge instead of justice." She looked into Ducky's eyes—a task that was easier for her than usual, considering his height. "It doesn't take a mind-reader to know that this Gibbs was more than just a boss to you all. And that you're out for blood…which I'm not saying is wrong or anything, but…" She paused, trying to collect her thoughts.

"I have yet to hear a question, my dear." Ducky said kindly.

"What was he?" She asked finally. "To me—to my team—he's just a file, a corpse and an empty house. I want to know what he was to you all, to bring you all back to this place after such a long time."

Ducky let out a weary sigh. "That's not the simplest question. He was a lot of different things to a lot of different people, was Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He was a trusted colleague and a loyal friend, a teacher, a partner…" The elderly medical examiner smiled at all the memories the question had evoked. "A doting father-figure, or a not-so-doting one…" he chuckled, thinking of Tony and McGee.

"But what was special about Gibbs was that, once you were 'his,' once you belonged to this little circle, he was there for you. Even if he didn't always agree with your decisions, he supported you. And if you needed help, his door was always open." His smile faltered a bit. "A practice that may have aided in his death, I am afraid."

"I suppose the easiest answer is that he was family. We all were—are." He corrected himself. "And nothing keeps you from helping family."

"That was really, really nice, Dr. Mallard," said Jimmy thickly, sounding as if he had swallowed a rock.

"Thank you, Jimmy." Ducky said. "And now, Allison—may I call you Allison?" He asked Ally.

"No!" Was Ally's immediate, panicked reply. "Why would you call me that?"

Taken slightly aback, Ducky said, "I'm sorry. If you would prefer to be called by your last name, that's fine, too."

"Dr. Mallard just likes being on a first-name basis with people. It's kind of his thing," Jimmy added by way of explanation.

Calming herself down, Ally said more evenly, "I'm fine with a first name basis. Please, feel free to call me Ally. But Allison is a no-go."

"Why, if you don't mind me asking?" Ducky inquired.

"'Cause it's not my name," she said. "My full first name is Ally. The end. It's not a nickname."

"Really?" Ducky asked, surprised. "That's odd."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. It's strange. But it's what my parents named me and it's what I want to be called," she said with the air of someone who's been through this line of questioning before.

"No, I mean it's odd because I was sure I heard McGee refer to you as Allison."

Ally's face reddened. "I knew it!" She hissed. "He's still calling me that. He didn't even bother asking me first. Has the man never heard of Rule Eight?"

"Ooh, I know that one!" Palmer jumped in cheerfully. "Never take anything for granted!"

"Exactly! A trained federal agent and he has no idea how to—" Something clicked. "Wait, how do _you _know one of DiNozzo's rules?"

"They weren't always DiNozzo's rules," Ducky laughed. "He got them from Gibbs, first."

"All of them?" She asked. _Not just Rule Nine? _

"Well, I can't be sure about that," The doctor said. "If I know Anthony, he'll probably have changed a few, to make the list his own."

"Hey, what's your twelfth rule?" Jimmy asked.

Ally blinked a bit, then found herself studying a non-existent pattern on the floor. "Um…Never date a co-worker, I think…" She tried to make herself sound uncertain, as if she didn't already know that one by heart.

"Huh," Palmer said wonderingly. "I thought for sure he would've changed that one."

Clearing her throat, Ally turned her attention back to the older man. "So, what was it you wanted to ask me?"

"Ah, yes." Ducky seemed to shake himself out of an errant thought. "Well, I am rather ashamed to admit that I have not kept in contact with the team as I should have, following my 'retirement.' I managed to fill in most of the blanks with help from Mr. (ahem)-Dr. Palmer and Abigail, but I am afraid there is one area I have yet to understand. That is the acquisition of Agent Anders. It seems I was on a cruise at the time of his hire, and I never learned the full circumstances. I was hoping you might be able to tell me."

"Doctor, I told you about that." Jimmy interjected. "Tony ran into Agent Anders when they worked a joint case with the FBI, and then he hired him away from his team."

"Well, that is the bare bones of it," Ally agreed. Behind Ducky's back, Jimmy shook his head urgently. "But I'd be happy to tell you the full story a little later."

"Why wait?" Ducky said genially. "I'd love to hear it now, if you don't mind."

"Huh? But I should probably get back to my team…" Ally didn't want to refuse, but she was sure DiNozzo would start wondering where she was if she didn't return soon.

"Just tell him you got caught up in one of Dr. Mallard's stories," Jimmy said helpfully. "He'll understand."

"And what exactly does that mean?" Ducky asked his former assistant with narrowed eyes.

"Nothing, Doctor." Jimmy said quickly. He gestured at Ally to start talking.

**Next chapter, learn how Anders joined Team DiNozzo and experience a stakeout…probably. **

**And kids, don't ever assume that just because someone's name is short, it's short for something else. Sure, you'll be right most of the time, but what about the times when you aren't? **

–**Someone whose name isn't Bartholomew**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: For no other reason than because I know most of you don't read the author's notes, I will now transcribe my favorite line from the song "Pink Elephants on Parade" from the classic Disney movie **_**Dumbo**_**: "I can stand the sight of worms and look at microscopic germs, but Technicolor pachyderms is really too much for me." Drunken baby elephant hallucinations FTW.**

Ally hopped up on one of the autopsy tables, feet dangling awkwardly as she shifted until she was comfortable. With both the doctors looking at her, she chewed on her lip for a moment before beginning her story.

"So—"

_DiNozzo and Ally sat in their respective desks in an office building that was considerably less orange than the D.C. office. DiNozzo looked bored and frustrated, fiddling with his tie as Ally typed furiously on her computer. She had her tongue clenched between her teeth and seemed to be putting a great deal of effort into what should have been a simple enough task._

_An extremely tall and bulky man in an ill-fitting suit came to a stop by their cluster of cubicles, aided by an aging security guard._

"_We got it from here," DiNozzo said, waving the older man off with a tired sigh. "FBI, right?" He asked. "Here to pick up your files?" He gestured vaguely at a number of rectangular cardboard boxes neatly stacked on one of the empty desks. "I'm Very Special Agent Anthony DiNizzo. This is Al." The girl didn't look up. "She's downloading the digital copies for you now."_

"_Special Agent Ian Anders." The man held out a hand that the Boss seemed reluctant to take. To his surprise, Anders' grip was fairly gentle. "Pleased to meet you."_

"_So, what took you guys over at the Bureau so long? Usually when you yank one of our cases out from under us, we're only a day or two in. We'd spent almost a week and a half on this one when we got your boss' call." The Bossman's tone was friendly, but it was obvious he was a little ticked at having all that work come to nothing._

_Anders didn't seem to pick up on the hostility, or maybe he just didn't care. "Well, the serial killer we suspect committed this crime has been inactive for over eight months. We originally believed him to either be incarcerated or dead. That's part of why it took us so long to pick up on your case; we didn't expect to find further crimes matching this M.O. One of your B.O.L.O.s caught the attention of a technical analyst, and that's when we made the connection and notified your office."_

"_Was that prepared? Like, did you practice that in the car on the way over?" DiNozzo asked, grinning. "Could've used a little more emotion, if you ask me."_

_Anders just smiled pleasantly._

"_Well, we here at NCIS are always happy to help," DiNozzo said with falsely bright cheer. "Now, if you'll hand the nice man the memory stick thingy, Al, he can be on his way and we can get back to work."_

"_Um, yeah," Ally said. "About that…" She turned her monitor towards her boss, revealing a familiar bright blue screen._

"_Again? Seriously?" He said, exasperated. "Well, get on the phone to I.T. I guess I'll set the transfer up from my computer." He turned toward Anders again. "This'll just take a little bit."_

"_Actually," Anders said. "Do you mind if I take a look? I have a CompSci degree."_

"_Computational Sci-fi?" The older agent asked. When Anders opened his mouth to correct him, he laughed. "Kidding. I've known a few computer geeks in my day, Agent Anders, although I must say you don't look very geeky." Anders didn't seem to quite know how to respond to that. "I do have to warn you, it usually takes the in-home set at least a couple hours to clean up one of her messes, so it'll probably be faster if you just let me handle it." When Anders still seemed inclined to take on the job, he shrugged. "But you can take a shot if you want."_

_The agent had a little trouble crouching down to the appropriate level, but when he did, he began to take in the unintelligible white script on the screen. "Uh-huh," he said. "Do you have any idea what you did to cause this?" He asked Ally._

"_If I did, I wouldn't have done it," she said dully. "I'm pretty sure this thing is allergic to me."_

"_Pun intended?" He chuckled warmly as he tapped absently on the keyboard._

"_Pun?" Ally asked blankly._

"_Here you go," he said with a few final keystrokes. He swiveled the screen back so that it faced her. The blue had been replaced with the image of her in-progress download churning back to life. _

_She looked at the screen, looked at DiNozzo, looked at the screen again, and then asked Anders, "Will you be my best friend?"_

_He laughed. "This should be done in a few minutes, and then I'll let you guys get back to it."_

_DiNozzo's eyes narrowed a bit, as he seemed to see Agent Anders in a new light. "You know, it's a little strange that they sent one agent to pick up the information for this all-important serial killer. Not that you're not man enough to handle it, I'm sure," he grinned again, "but usually we get a heavier presence for something like this."_

"_To be honest, we're not really sure if this latest killing is the work of our guy. With the sudden and very long-lasting break in his pattern, we were pretty sure he had died. It's possible, as I suggested earlier, that he was merely in prison and has begun to kill again, but a number of small inconsistencies—the victim being a low-risk target, for instance—make us consider the possibility that this is a copycat killing, or even unrelated. Until we're sure, this is a lower-priority case for us."_

"_You're a profiler, aren't you?" The Boss asked suddenly. When Anders nodded, he said, "Thought so. Well, it's been a tough fiscal…decade. I can understand why your bosses don't want to waste resources on a 'maybe.' You know, we have the body," he said with an abrupt change of subject. _

"_Yes, I know," Anders said. "I have a van and uniform detail waiting downstairs to transport all the evidence, the victim's body included."_

"_Yeah, you could do that," DiNozzo agreed. "Or you could remember that we've done a lot of background on this particular case already, not to mention we have the files, the test results, the time allocated for the solution of this case. You know…resources."_

"_You're suggesting that I should leave the case to you?" Anders asked. "Unfortunately, Agent DiNozzo, I'm not in a position to make that decision."_

"_Of course not. Like I said, NCIS is happy to help," this time saying it with much more sincerity. "What I want to do would keep you and your bosses in the loop while we close the case." When Anders still hadn't caught on, he explained, "I want you to ride with my team for a while. You can read us in on your serial killer, and if it looks like we've got your guy, we'll hand the case over, no questions asked."_

"_Well, that's not my choice either…" Anders said, although he wavered in his resolve._

"_No sweat. I know some people," Boss said with a smirk._

"And that's how we started working a joint case with Anders as our FBI liaison." Ally said. "Any questions?"

"Don't you think you stopped a little early? You still haven't told us how the boy got hired on." Ducky prompted her.

"I'm getting there, I was just taking a break," she said. "Story-telling is pretty tiring, you know."

"Maybe if you stopped talking in the third person," Palmer suggested.

Ally blinked a few times, then shrugged. "Anyway, I'm gonna skip ahead a little ways, because the case was actually pretty boring once you got down to it. Definitely not crime-fiction material. And Anders was competent and impressive the whole time, but what drove the point home was this one particular incident." She opened her mouth to begin, then stopped herself. "Really quickly, I want to explain that there are very few things that can make me…emotional, and this just happened to be one of those things." And with that unusual disclaimer, she went on:

_ And so, __**Ally**__, DiNozzo and FBI Agent Ian Anders were out questioning witnesses one day. It was a pretty routine check-up on the naval base where the crime had taken place. They were in the cookie-cutter neighborhood where all the soldiers and their families lived. DiNozzo was overseeing the questioning while Anders described a particular set of characteristics the murderer might have had. Ally was…ridiculously bored. She was not used to playing second fiddle to anyone but her boss, and was feeling a little superfluous._

_ Suddenly she heard a high-pitched yelp pierce the monotonous suburban silence. The sound was punctuated with the growled phrase, "Shut _up_, you stupid mutt!" She whirled around to find one of the previously empty picket-fenced yards occupied by a man in his late thirties and a small, chocolate-brown puppy._

_ The man was wearing a wife-beater and a pair of sweatpants and was holding the dog's face into the grass, clamping its snout shut with a rough hand. "You piss in my house one more time, and I swear—" He whispered harshly._

_ "That's a puppy," Ally said suddenly. The man jumped to find a woman wearing a hat with the NCIS moniker standing at his gate._

_ "Uh, yeah." He smiled at her. "I hope we weren't bothering you, Agent." He released the puppy's snout, patting its head as a perfunctory gesture. The small dog simply whimpered. "My ex-wife thought having a dog would teach my kid responsibility, but mostly I end up taking care of it. The damn thing won't stop making messes in the house. I have a mind to drown it," He laughed._

_ "Because it's a puppy," she said, speaking in the same quiet, even tone as she had before. "It doesn't know any better. There's not much point in telling it to stop, any more than there is in telling a baby not to have a dirty diaper. You have to teach it."_

_ "I'll, uh, keep that in mind. Is there anything I can help you with?" He asked nervously, still petting the dog as he did so, the creature cringing each time his hand came toward it. _

_ "You can explain why your dog is so afraid of you," Ally said. "Puppies love everyone unconditionally. The only reason they wouldn't is if someone has repeatedly and severely abused them." She raised one corner of her shirt, exposing her sidearm. "Care to explain?"_

_ Suddenly, she found herself bodily picked up by a pair of very solid arms. "What the—?"_

_ "That's about enough of that," said DiNozzo. He walked up beside Ally, where she was firmly held in Anders' embrace. "We have to go now, Al. Sorry to take up your time, —" He paused, waiting for the dog's owner to identify himself. The man just stared. "Right. Well then." He turned to face his senior (and only) field agent. "If Agent Anders lets you go, do you promise to behave?"_

_ Ally struggled futilely. "He's the one who needs to behave. He says he wants to drown his dog!" She said accusingly._

_ "I-it was just a joke!" The man asserted._

_ "Well, it wasn't funny," Ally hissed. _

_ "Al, I understand that you want to help the dog, but it's not exactly our jurisdiction." He reminded her. "We'll call in a case of animal cruelty on our way back to base."_

_ "But—!" Suddenly, Ally felt herself being shifted to one arm. Anders leaned over the fence, the very befuddled and frightened man scooting away in horror as he scooped up the quivering brown ball and handed it to Ally._

_ He then let them drop gently to the ground, turning to face the dog's owner. "Picking on someone or something smaller and weaker than yourself is not my definition of a man." He said, pleasant smile nowhere to be found. _

_ As the agents began to walk away, one holding a very squirmy puppy, the man called after them, "What am I supposed to tell my daughter?"_

_ "Tell her it ran away," DiNozzo replied. "I'm sure she'll have no problem believing you."_

"You threatened to shoot the guy?" Palmer asked.

"I didn't threaten him! I just…showed him my gun." Ally said. "And I wasn't done with my story yet."

"It does seem to be a bit over-the-top," Ducky pointed out. "You implied that you were willing to employ deadly force for a case of animal abuse."

"Okay, yeah, maybe. Hindsight is 20/20." She said dismissively. "Now, if you'll excuse me—"

_Back in the office, the case had been wrapped up without further event. The killer was a copycat who had hoped to pin the money-motivated murder of a fellow naval officer on a famous serial killer and who was woefully unaware that his inspiration had long since been inactive and was presumed dead._

_ Ally was entertaining a very lick-happy puppy under her desk, DiNozzo was finishing up a report, and Anders was getting ready to leave for good._

_ "Well, it was certainly interesting getting to know you both," he said as he headed for the exit, slinging a disproportionately tiny backpack over one shoulder. "See you around, maybe." He lingered slightly at the elevator._

_ Ally asked, "So what's the verdict, Boss? Can we keep him?"_

_ DiNozzo looked up, raised an eyebrow, and said, "The stolen property is your responsibility. Do whatever you want with it."_

_ "Hmm?" Ally said, confused. "Oh—the puppy is a girl, and she's definitely coming home with me, yes she is," she pitched her voice an octave higher as she directed the last part of her sentence to her small charge. "I've even got a name picked out—I shall call her Cocoa, and she shall be mine, and she shall be my Cocoa."_

_ "Okay," the Boss said slowly. "Because that's not weird at all. Who were you talking about, then?"_

_ "Ian. Are you gonna offer him the job or not?" She said it as if Anders wasn't even in the room._

_ "Well, I was considering it. I mean, he's got the computer skills we so desperately lack, he's an FBI-trained profiler, and he's big enough to keep all your crazy in check…" DiNozzo mused aloud. "He seems like a pretty good choice for an addition to our team, especially since we've been two men down for the past…two years. So you like him, huh?"_

_ "The guy just stole a dog for me. We are officially best friends for life." Ally announced. "Whether or not you hire him."_

_ "Um, guys?" Anders said. "Am I to understand I'm being offered a job here?"_

_ "Well, if the FBI just lent him out for an entire week, he can't be that attached to them. Yeah, I think I'll definitely put the question to him." DiNozzo said finally. He swiveled in his chair to look at Anders. "Hey, wanna work with us full time?"_

_ Anders smiled._

"And _that's _how it all started," Ally finished, more than a little out of breath.

"That is quite a story." Ducky said approvingly. "And rather longer than even I expected. You'd best rejoin your team before you're missed."

She swiped a hand over her forehead tiredly, then jumped off the table with a resounding **thump.** "See you!" She said, sprinting out into the hallway and bounding up the stairs.

When she found herself back in the squad room, she gave a sigh of relief to find that the team was still in the process of planning the stakeout that would begin tonight.

Tony looked up and frowned. "Where have you been?"

Still panting, she tried to explain, "Ducky…storytime…"

"Say no more." DiNozzo laughed. "The more things change…"

**A/N: Tune in next time for the * I really, really swear this time* stakeout!**

**And by the way, as a first time fanfic-writer, I'm still not too clear on how all this works—could anybody show me what happens when you type in that rectangular space and hit the button labeled, "post review?" Thanks!**


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: So. Been a while. Transitional periods and what-not. I'm back and I'll try to update regularly. Now, if you'll excuse me, the stairs in this building have been burned down by termites, so I'M GONNA HAVE TO JUMP!**

"All right. We need as much on Gett as we can…get," DiNozzo said. "Anything that can get us probable cause or a warrant. We'll go in three shifts, two men each, which leaves at least one team some resting time while another team traces stuff down at the office. First shift is the 10-2, covered by Ziva and yours truly. Then we'll have Baxter and Al on the 2-6, followed by McGee and Anders on the 6-10, and so on and so on till we catch a break."

Al, Lex, and Anders nodded in unison. They'd been on their share of stakeouts under his command—even Lex, who'd only been on the team for six months.

As DiNozzo turned on his heel to deliver these directions to his peers and hoped fervently that they wouldn't challenge his decisions just to teach him another lesson in sharing, he felt a rather pointy fingertip make contact with his shoulder.

"Boss?" Al said quietly. "If I may?"

The NCIS Special Agent felt a headache coming on. Maybe he shouldn't have paired her with Lex. He knew they hadn't got along on the last assignment they had shared. He started the policy of putting her with the most junior agent when the team went from two to three, and he knew she would prefer to be riding along with him instead.

"Yes, Al, what is it?" He asked tiredly.

"Well, I was wondering if maybe I could offer a suggestion about the…seating arrangements."

He knew it.

"See, I think maybe I should ride the first shift with Agent David, and you could take Lex. That way we have a senior agent on every squad and I get a break from Mr. Fluffy Ball of Cuteness." She said with a wrinkle of her nose.

"Well, um…" He'd been hoping to use the time to catch up properly with Ziva. It was clear she didn't want the others to know how bad their relationship had become, and they needed to shore up their stories, but if this prevented trouble… "Wait, what?" He asked suddenly. "Mr_._ _what_?"

"Mr. Fluffy Ball of Cuteness." Ally said simply. "I told Baxter that if he didn't stop using stakeouts as an opportunity to tell me about his love life in all its grotesquely sappy glory, I would start calling him Mr. Fluffy Ball of Cuteness."

He raised his eyebrows inquisitively as he looked over at the ex-cop. Admittedly the guy still had a bad case of probie-itis around authority figures, but he was by no means a pushover. "He told you about his love life?"

"He kept going on about his feelings and how he met his girlfriend and what he should get her for some holiday or another…I don't get why guys think all women are a source of universal romantic advice. I just think it would be a good idea if we took a break from each other. And Agent David seems like a good stakeout partner." She looked up at her boss with lowered lids. "Sorry if I'm breaking up the team. I know you guys worked together a long time."

"No, I get it." DiNozzo sighed. "You can learn a lot from Ziva. Pay attention." He waved her off as he headed toward Team Gibbs with the revised assignments. He scratched his head and muttered, "I didn't even know he _had_ a girlfriend…"

* * *

><p>"So." Ziva said, letting the word stretch out in the silence. She'd been sitting in a car with a quasi-stranger for almost a half-hour, and not a word had passed between them.<p>

Agent Duncan barely inclined her head in response. She kept her binoculars trained unblinkingly on the small suburban house.

"How do you like working with Tony?" It was fairly obvious that DiNozzo's team was uncomfortable working with outsiders, but maybe if they found some common ground…

The younger woman shrugged.

"He's a very capable agent," Ziva continued. "I have always thought so, although I try not to let him know." She grinned conspiratorially. "I would not want him to get a bigger head than he already has."

There was a barely noticeable twitch of the shoulder, as if she was trying to shake off an irritating fly.

"But you know, he can really be a bit of a _glass clown_," she said, throwing out the kind of 'mistake' Americans loved to correct. She was very close to tearing her hair off if Duncan didn't say _something_. What had she done to this girl to make her so adamant in her refusal to speak?

"Oh, **Goddammit**!" Came the sudden interjection as her passenger jolted up in her chair and slammed a fist against the car door.

Ziva blinked. Was misplacing a 'c' so very terrible?

But no, the girl was handing her the binoculars and casting a defeated gesture towards something beyond the windshield.

"Oh, no," Ziva breathed as her eyes locked on one of her least favorite things in the world. The Captain was trundling slowly down his driveway, dragging behind him—

"Yup," Duncan said. "Apparently, tomorrow is trash pick-up day."

"And our Captain Gett prefers to put his garbage out the night before." Ziva sighed. "Two cans of trash, and they could not have turned up on Tony's shift?"

On hearing DiNozzo's name, Duncan tensed up once again. "Yes, why should we be made to do our jobs?" She said through gritted teeth. Her eyes followed the Captain as he returned to his house. "When are we doing this?"

"Wait until all the lights are off for at least a half-hour. Then we will retrieve the trash bags and see if there is anything of use in them."

After the allotted time had passed, the two agents crept under cover of darkness to where the plastic containers stood. Duncan stood watch as Ziva cracked the lid on the larger of them. "Oh!" She gave a sharp inhale of breath as the smell of alcohol hit her in a pungent wave. "Well, we now know how the Captain is spending his time."

"Shocker."

Ziva grasped the first bag and handed it to the junior agent as she turned on her flashlight. She did not want to accidentally come across any broken glass. She shielded the light with her fingers until she shined it into the smelly bin. "You have got to be kidding me!"

"What? What is it?" Duncan asked.

"It is impossible." Ziva said, shaking her head disbelievingly.

"_What_ is?"

Ziva simply stepped aside, careful to keep the light contained in the trashcan as she allowed Duncan an unobstructed view of the contents.

At the bottom of the container was a small plastic grocery bag whose insides had haphazardly spilled out. The items had not quite escaped the bag, which prevented them from falling into a noxious-looking mixture that had pooled underneath, but they were still quite visible to the two agents who looked in now.

Inside the bag were a nondescript hammer with a few dents and scratches on its head and a large semiautomatic handgun.

**A/N: DUNH DUNH DUNH! That's right; Ally is no longer a pure good guy. She's being unpleasant to Ziva and going out of her way to separate her from Tony. Oh, and the evidence. That's in there, too. Sorry for the long wait on this chapter. It won't happen again. As a bonus, here's a typical bullpen chat for Team DiNozzo:**

"Nothing on the BOLO yet?" Lex asked. "Where could this guy have disappeared to?"

"Well, it's not like we gave them a lot to go on." Anders reasoned. "Blonde Caucasian male, mid-twenties, tattoo shaped like an anchor on his left shoulder, drives a Taurus…this could be a lot of people."

"What?" Ally asked suddenly. "There's part of your problem. You messed up the description. The guy's a brunette."

"Um, no, he's a blonde." Lex said. "I caught a better look at him than you did, I should know."

"I saw him just fine." Ally insisted. "His hair's the same shade as DiNozzo's!"

"DiNozzo's a blonde, too," Lex said.

"Is not!" Ally said, horrified at the very suggestion. Blonde guys gave her the creeps.

"He is." Lex said. "A dark blonde, but definitely a blonde."

"No," the youngest agent exclaimed. "_I'm_ a dark blonde. DiNozzo's a light brown."

"Actually, you're more of a medium blonde," Anders said.

"What are you, my hairdresser?" Ally snapped.

"Look, if it bothers you so much, why don't you just ask DiNozzo?" Anders suggested evenly.

"Ask me what?" DiNozzo strolled in with a no-nonsense look on his face.

"Nothing!"

**A/N: This reflects an ongoing debate between my friends and me. Where do you weigh in? Tell me in your review. **


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: It heartens me to know that you share my opinion about DiNozzo's hair color. In your faces, my friends who hold a different viewpoint than I do! Oh…Abby's not the murderer. I just felt I needed to toss that out there.  
><strong>

Tony and Baxter were headed back to the hotel. They were the next ones on shift, and they wanted to get some sleep in ahead of time. Tony had offered to drive Lex because they were going the same place, but also because he would probably never make it there on his own.

It was a twenty-minute drive, but Lex was still fairly uncomfortable around his boss and had no intention of starting a conversation with him. This in turn made Tony uncomfortable. The man was born to converse.

"So…" Tony said, seizing on a recent topic. "Al tells me you've got yourself a girl."

Lex blinked confusedly. "What?"

"You know, a girlfriend. She says you won't shut up about her. You must really like her."

Lex shook his head. "I don't have a girlfriend."

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Really? Maybe Al misunderstood. She said you talked her ear off the last time you were on stakeout together about some girl."

The young man frowned irritably. "I barely talked to her at all last stakeout. She glared at me whenever I opened my mouth. And I _don't_ have a girlfriend."

"Then why on Earth would Al start calling you—" Tony's phone rang. "Hang on," he said, flipping open his cell. "Yeah, Ziva?"

Lex couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but he could tell from Tony's reaction that it was a big deal.

"What d'you mean you brought him in? You know SECNAV will have all our asses if we don't have something to back up the arrest after everything he did to cover it up! For God's sake, you were supposed to be on leave. If he finds out…well, yeah, if Al made the arrest, then it's better, but if…well, what kind of evidence?"

This answer must have been particularly impressive, because Tony immediately hung a U-turn of the most illegal variety. "We're on our way," he said, then flicked the phone closed and said to Lex, "Stakeout's cancelled."

* * *

><p>"Is it his?" Tony asked Ziva as he stared at the clear plastic evidence bag in her hand.<p>

"I believe so, yes." Ziva nodded. "But to be sure, Abby is running the serial number now."

"And it was just in the trash can?" McGee asked. "Just _there_?"

"For the one thousandth time, yes, McGee." Ziva sighed. "Now, we have Gett in Interrogation. We had to bring his son in as well. There is no other family, so we have asked for a social worker to be sent over. It is late, so they may not be here until tomorrow morning."

"Where's the kid now?" Tony asked.

"Jimmy's watching him," McGee said. "How do we want to handle this?"

"I say we let him stew till we've got some hard evidence on him. Make sure the gun is right, check for prints. Snag some DNA if he'll consent. He's cocky, so he might play the odds that it won't match up." DiNozzo felt energized. The path was finally clear.

"I still can't believe it was right there!" McGee exclaimed. "Not even hidden."

"Well, it was beneath a pile of garbage," Ziva pointed out. "Not many people would care to look further."

"True." DiNozzo grinned. "But you guys aren't most people. Maybe you and Al should team up all the time."

"About that…" Ziva said, suddenly thoughtful. "I am sure that Agent Duncan is very capable, but I do not think that we were a very good fit. It is doubtful that we will be working with one another anytime soon, but…"

"What d'you mean?" Tony asked, brow furrowed. "What happened?"

"The girl simply does not like me." Ziva said, shrugging. "She would not make eye contact, and she did not talk to me unless she had to."

"Oh, that." Tony resumed his easy grin. "She's not real talkative on stakeouts. Plus she takes some time to warm up to people. But I know for a fact she likes you."

"You do?" Ziva asked dubiously.

"Yeah, she went out of her way to ask for you as her stakeout partner. You should feel lucky; you got this close to being stuck with me instead." He laughed lightly.

As Ziva considered this little piece of information, Abby rushed up with an almost manic smile on her face.

"It's his!" She crowed. "And I found some clear, distinct prints on the hammer that I can already tell don't belong to Gibbs. The computer's comparing them to Captain Murderer-Face's prints right now!"

"That's great news, Abs," Tony said, putting a stabilizing hand on her shoulder. "We'll head down in just a second. I'm gonna try to get the big M-F's DNA."

"I will handle it," Ziva said helpfully. "You and McGee should see what else Abby has. I have a feeling that the Captain will be especially arrogant around a woman."

Tony nodded, and McGee looped an arm around Abby's shoulders as they entered the elevator.

Ziva turned and made her way down the dark orange hallway. She paused for a moment in front of the large gray door before ducking into the observation room.

She felt disoriented for a moment when a figure stood silhouetted against the one-way mirror, but a familiar voice coupled with her adjusting eyesight soon reassured her.

"I just wanted to get a look at the bastard," Ducky said with a firm set to his mouth.

"He is not what you expected, is he?" Ziva said.

"A drunk, abusive man who is foolish enough to leave evidence of his murder intact, tucking it just slightly out of view like a child who doesn't want to clean his room…" Ducky shook his head. "No, he is not what I was expecting. This man is not good enough to lick the bottom of my shoes, let alone take the life of someone like Gibbs."

"It does not always work that way," Ziva sighed. "The weak and cowardly man does sometimes win."

"Are you going to interrogate him?"

"Hmm?" Ziva asked. "No, I am here to see if he will voluntarily contribute his DNA. He has not been officially put under arrest yet."

"Playing up the 48 hours?" Ducky asked.

"Yes, Tony wants him to squirm." Her eyes narrowed. "So do I."

"He has been fairly quiet so far." The doctor said.

Ziva sighed again. Ducky turned to face her, a quizzical look on his face. That was not the sigh of a woman bent on causing suffering.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"It is not important." She shook her head. "I should be focused on the case. But…"

"But?"

"I am worried, Ducky. About Tony." Ziva said, almost involuntarily.

"Why?" Dr. Mallard asked. "Tony is handling the case as best he can. Yes, he is suppressing his real feelings, but that is a hazard of the job."

"It is not about the case. It is about his Agent Duncan."

"Ally? What about her?"

"Have you noticed anything…unusual?" Ziva asked vaguely.

Ducky thought back to their only conversation. "She seems like a very capable—if excitable—agent who is very devoted to the job and to Tony."

"And that is the problem." Ziva said flatly. "Ducky, I think she is in love with him!"

"What?" The one-time medical examiner nearly fell over. He coughed awkwardly, "That would be a problem if it were true. Whatever gave you that idea?"

"First of all, she is extremely fond of Tony. So much so that it bothers her even to hear me tease him." Ziva said this with the air of someone reading off a long list.

"Secondly, she seems to dislike me very much and without any cause. I mean," she paused thoughtfully, "getting irritated at someone for calling you the wrong name is understandable, but I have barely had any contact with her and she has already begun to show animosity."

She shrugged helplessly. "And thirdly, she went out of her way, in spite of her overt dislike of me, to ask to be my partner for the stakeout—with the alternative being that I would have been paired with Tony."

"Hmm…" Ducky thought about it for a moment. "Well, perhaps you are misreading the signs. Can you be sure she really dislikes you? Tony knows her the best of any of us, why don't you ask him?"

"I did. He says that she is taking time to 'warm up' to me." She shook her head fiercely. "But I know when someone hates me, and that girl was a second away from purposefully mispronouncing my name. She glares at me whenever I get near her beloved boss, and does whatever she can to separate us. That, to me, seems like the behavior of a jealous woman." She sighed yet again. "But Tony must be either oblivious or in denial, because he does not appear to see it."

"If you are right," Ducky said slowly and ponderously, "then it could disrupt his team if it is not dealt with. In some ways, it could even be a danger to his career. Still, we are in the middle of a case, and I am sure she will not be making any romantic advances toward Anthony at this time."

"So you think we should wait?"

"Yes. Yes, I think that is the best thing for it." The doctor said finally. "If Tony needs our help, we will give it to him once we have finished our present business. For now, try to avoid working with young Ally if you can."

"Thank you, Ducky," Ziva said with a smile, pressing her lips lightly to his cheek. "You always know what to do." She pulled her shoulders back and holding up a cotton swab as if it were a throwing knife, she entered the interrogation room with a loud bang.

"Hello, Captain."

**A/N: You've reached the number you dialed. Please leave a message in the small white box below.**


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: Don't be bashin' Ally. She's like my kid. And everybody's kids have flaws, man. But she's kind of…my age, so that's really weird. Actually, if we look at birth dates, she might even be older than me. Forget the kid thing. **

"Hey, Duncan," Baxter said, standing over her desk. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Ally shrugged, pushed out her chair and followed him to the little nook behind the main staircase. "What is it?"

"DiNozzo told me what you said." Lex half-whispered.

"What I said?" She asked without much enthusiasm.

"You told him I had a girlfriend? That I wouldn't shut up about her?" Lex glared at her. "Did you think you were being funny?"

"It had nothing to do you with you, I was just—"

"When you drag my name into it, it has everything to do with me." He said angrily. "And after you made it pretty clear that I'm the last person you'd think of as 'boyfriend material,' too."

"I didn't…" She sputtered. "That's not fair!"

He crossed his arms against his chest and looked down at her, waiting for an explanation.

Chewing nervously on her lip, she sighed and asked, "So what did you tell him?"

Lex's expression changed from one of expectation to one of apathy. "The truth," he said flatly. "I don't enjoy lying to my boss." _Like some people,_ his eyes seemed to say.

"You don't understand, okay, I just—"

"There you are!" Anders' head poked around the corner. "The interrogation's about to start."

"Huh?" Ally asked. "I thought he was waiting on the DNA matchup."

"There was a glitch with one of Ms. Sciuto's machines. It'll be ready in an hour or so, but SECNAV's riding us to produce a confession or turn him loose. Not to mention the guy's been threatening to lawyer up."

"But," Lex pointed out, "The fingerprints didn't pan out. Without that DNA evidence…"

"We still have the matching tool impressions from the boat, the gun he used to kill Gibbs, and his attempts to get rid of both the hammer and the weapon in his bi-weekly trash pickup." Anders reminded him. "I think the Boss can handle it."

* * *

><p>Tony sat back in his chair, idly thrumming on the table in time to whatever song he was listening to on his iPod. An occasional burst of humming would escape his lips, and at one point he began to play an imaginary saxophone.<p>

Determined not to be tricked, the good Captain endured this behavior for almost twenty minutes before he shouted, "HEY!"

Feigning innocence, Tony slowly pulled an earbud away from one ear.

"I'm sorry, did you want to listen, too?" He offered the small white object to the man. When he just glared, Tony tilted his head to the side and said. "It's a good one."

Gett slammed his fist down on the table, making his feelings very clear. Tony just shrugged and said, "Suit yourself." He stowed his player in the pocket of his suit and shifted upright in his seat.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Gett?" He asked pleasantly.

"Captain." The man barked.

"Right. Sorry."

"You can tell me when you're letting me out of here." He seethed. "You dragged me out of my home at midnight, scared my son half to death, read me my rights, then you sent in some Israeli assassin to take my DNA—"

Tony considered, for a moment, what Ziva must have done to make the man think that. She hadn't been an assassin for years. Maybe he should review the tapes later.

"—all without giving me any explanation. I can only assume that you're here to tell me that you idiots made a mistake, and that you're sending my home."

"Well, no." He said, smiling. "I'm here to get your confession."

"My confession?" The man blustered. "For what?"

"Let's not play games, Lieutenant."

"Captain!" He insisted, face reddening.

"Of course." DiNozzo nodded. "Now, I understand you waived your right to counsel?"

"I don't need an attorney," Gett said fiercely. "I haven't done anything wrong."

"Right, and a big strong Ensign like you wouldn't need a lawyer to protect him, anyway," Tony grinned.

"CAPTAIN!" The man's face was nearly purple. "I don't need a lawyer because I won't be staying. You haven't even charged me for anything, which means I can leave whenever I want. And that's what I'll be doing," he said, standing up in his chair.

"Actually, Petty Officer," –Gett flinched— "I have the right to keep you for forty-eight hours without charging you. But, if you'd like, I could go ahead and charge you now, if it'll make you feel better." Tony propped his head up on his fist. "I'm a people-pleaser."

As Gett opened his mouth to answer, Tony cut him off. "But then the deal goes away."

"Deal? You never said anything about a deal!" Gett said angrily.

"Didn't I?" Tony asked thoughtfully. "Well, there is one. See, if you confess now, you get a deal. But once I charge you, it's a no-go. Either way you're going to jail, though, so I'd just take the deal." He looked at Gett expectantly.

The Captain stared at him, waiting for him to go on. "What's the deal?" He demanded finally.

"Oh, right. Well, see, you're gonna be in prison for a long time. So you might want your kid to come and see you. If you sign the confession, I'll take to…" He thought for a moment. "Oh, whoever, and I'll see to it that your kid can visit you. Honestly, I couldn't care less, but your kid seems to like you for some reason—he keeps telling my guys that you're innocent; it's almost sad. But," his voiced dropped into a low growl and his eyes narrowed to slits, "if I have to charge you without a confession, then I will do everything in my power to make sure that you never see your son again."

Gett paled a bit. "I have no idea what you're talking about. And your threats don't work on me. I have friends—connections—that could destroy your career in a heartbeat."

"Oh, you don't? Tony laid a hammer identical to the one in Abby's lab on the table. Gett's face clouded. "How about now?" He said, sliding an empty Sig Sauer next to it. He leaned in to whisper in Gett's ear.

"The man you murdered? He was like a father to me. If you think I'm gonna let you off the hook just because you're pals with a few politicians, well, then, you're just not very smart." A harsh smile split across his face. "Of course, I already knew that when you decided to pick a fight with _**Leroy**_. _**Jethro**_. _**Gibbs**_."

At this, Gett jumped about a foot in the air. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! This—I didn't—I never laid a hand on Gibbs!" He shouted frantically. "Not for lack of trying, but I sure as hell didn't murder the guy! That old bastard almost knocked me out!"

"So you do know what I'm taking about." Tony smirked. "Please, explain." He waved a hospitable hand at the chair. "Captain."

Gett sank into his seat, rubbing his forehead helplessly. "The guy was messing with my kid, okay? My kid! He was having him over for dinner and playing games like football and catch and whatever. I mean, yeah, I wasn't around to do those things for him, but that doesn't mean some stranger gets to step in. And anyway, what was I supposed to think, Kyle was coming home late from some old man's house every night of the week. And I didn't even find out until a few nights ago, when one of Gibbs' cards fell out of Kyle's jacket. I made him tell me what was going on, and then I decided to stop it."

"I had had a few drinks, so when I got to the house and nobody answered the door, I just went inside. There was a light on coming from the basement, so I went downstairs. I saw this big boat, right in the middle of the room, so I grabbed the nearest hammer and just started whaling on it." He squinted, trying to remember. "I think there was something written on the side that pissed me off, but…"

"Anyway, then the old guy shows up and I dropped the hammer. I put up my fists and shouted at him that I was gonna kill him—" he paused, then said anxiously, "it's just what you say, y'know? I lunged at him and he dropped me on the floor. Hard. He told me that he was just trying to be there for my son, since he didn't have anyone he could trust.

"And I said my son trusts _me_, and he said that I'm the one who hurt Kyle." Snot started to drip down the man's face as he sniffled. "Not those kids who got locked up. And I said it was an accident, and he said that I'm a father, I can't have accidents. Not with my kid. And I told him he was right, okay?" He scrubbed fervently at his nose. "I told him I was a wreck and I knew I was hurting Kyle. I told him I would throw my booze away that night." Tears started trickling down his face to mix with the smears of mucus. "It wasn't always like this. When my wife died—"

"Stick to the story." DiNozzo said coldly. "What happened next?"

"Next?" He asked groggily. "I went home. It was about 9-ish. I wanted to tell Kyle I was sorry. Tell him I love him. But he didn't get home till later, so I found all my alcohol and tossed it in the garbage."

"What about the hammer? And the gun?" DiNozzo asked.

"I never saw any gun," Gett shook his head. "And I didn't ever pick up the

hammer again. I just left."

"So you didn't shoot Gibbs and wrap the evidence up in a neat little bag for us to find in your garbage can?" He said this slowly, with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

"What? No!" He said immediately. "Gibbs was alive when I left!" He blinked, then was suddenly caught by another realization. "You got that stuff outta my trash? That's illegal without a warrant!"

"No it's not. You threw the stuff away and put it on the sidewalk in front of your house. That puts it on public property."

"No, no, this is a plant," Gett said, getting worked up. "Like I would ever be stupid enough to put the evidence where it could be traced back to me, I—" His eyes widened slowly, and he slumped back in his chair. "Is that deal still on the table?"

"Of course." DiNozzo said.

"I'll take it. I…I killed Agent Gibbs." He gave a heavy sigh. "Give me some paper so I can write it down and sign it."

Tony took in the man's defeated appearance curiously. Something didn't feel right. He said, "I'll be right back, then stepped outside.

He made a quick call and was just finishing up as he stepped into Abby's lab.

The goth girl looked up in surprise. "Tony, you're just in time. I should be getting a ding any moment now." She cocked her head, looking at him oddly.

"I thought you were interrogating Gett? What're you doing up here?" Her eyebrows jumped up. "Did he confess?" She asked joyfully.

"He did…" Tony affirmed, slowly.

Abby gave a shout of glee. "We got him, we got him!"

Suddenly, Jimmy Palmer rushed in, holding a glass gingerly between two fingers. He panted as he put the glass down on Abby's table.

"Here…you…go…Tony."

"What's this?" Abby asked, stopping mid-celebration hug.

"I need you to see if these prints match the ones on the gun." Tony said.

"Gett's prints? The ones on file are perfectly clear. They just don't match. Maybe one of the police officers messed up." When Tony remained silent, Abby just said, "Okay."

A few minutes had passed before the computer went off. "We have a match," said Abby confusedly. "But—"

Another ding followed the first. "The DNA!" She shouted, and rushed over to the screen. "What the—?"

"What is it?" Tony asked.

"It's a partial match. Like from a…" She stopped, gasping. "Like from a close male relative!"

"Like a son?" Tony asked. "These prints are from Kyle Gett. I had Jimmy offer the kid a glass of water."

"And I'll bet Kyle wears Converse, doesn't he?" She accused Jimmy.

"Uh, yes." Jimmy answered, still catching his breath."

"So that little kid…killed Gibbs?!" Abby said.

**A/N: And another DUNH DUNH DUNH! Did you really think it would be simple? Please! **

**Stay Tuned! And remember, the more you review, the faster I write. :) **


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: You have no idea how fun it was typing in the line from the last chapter. I've had that in my head since before I finished writing the first chapter. But don't worry, there are still some 'wow' moments ahead. **

"_That little kid…killed Gibbs?" _

Tony knew what Abby was going to find. He knew it even before Captain Gett figured it out. That didn't make it any easier to hear.

When he had taken this case, what had he wanted? Closure. Justice. Revenge. Instead, he was going to be in charge of shipping a scared, abused kid off to Juvey, where he would stay until he was 18. Six years for killing the man he had admired most. It wasn't fair.

"This isn't fair." McGee echoed his thoughts, sighing. When Tony looked up, he explained, "I know we're supposed to find the killer. I get that, but this is wrong. It was supposed to be someone evil, someone who deserved to die in prison…it wasn't supposed to be a twelve-year-old boy! How do you hate a twelve-year-old boy?" He shook his head. "Where's the closure in this?"

As they spoke, a Child Protective Services agent was talking to Kyle, walking him through the process of the interview he was about to have. The boy looked pale and nervous. His legs trembled under the table.

"Still, it makes sense," McGee continued. "Who else could get Gibbs to let his guard down? He had access, opportunity. Gibbs would never turn him away." The agent's voice nearly cracked as he tried to calmly and rationally explain the circumstances surrounding Gibbs' death. This latest blow had shaken the detachment everyone had adopted. Ziva's eyes had taken on a sheen visible even in the darkness of the observation room.

"He loved children too much. How can that be the reason for his death?" She whispered.

The social worker nodded to the mirror, letting them know that Kyle was ready to begin.

All three stood still, none of them making a move for the door. They didn't want this. Finally, as Ziva began to open her mouth to volunteer, Tony shook his head. Hard. Like a wet dog trying to shake himself dry. He had to step up, and he knew it.

Putting on a calm façade, he strode smoothly into the room and seated himself across from the young boy.

"Hi, Kyle. I'm Tony."

* * *

><p>In the bullpen, Team DiNozzo sat at their temporary cubicles, looking bemused.<p>

"A kid?" Lex tossed the question out into the silence.

Ally shrugged. "A kid."

Baxter nodded, as if that answered his question completely. It didn't, of course. But this whole case had been strange.  
>Anders looked especially puzzled. "But it doesn't make sense," he insisted. "There's no motive."<p>

"How do you know, though?" Ally asked. "We have no idea how this kid's mind works. Maybe, in his head, Gibbs was the enemy. I mean, he was bullied at school and at home. He'd just lost his mom. Maybe he just snapped, y'know? Sometimes people just snap."

Anders pushed out of his desk, muttered, "It doesn't make sense," one more time, and made his way to the elevator.

* * *

><p>"I killed him," Kyle blurted out suddenly. The CPS agent moved to shush him, but he waved her off. "I killed Gibbs."<p>

Tony retained his calm mask in spite of his surprise. Did the kid want to go to jail? "Why?"

"Because he was trying to take my dad away!" Kyle said shrilly.

"He was?" Tony asked mildly. "Why do you say that?"

"Because he was!" Kyle insisted. "He pretended he was my friend, but he was gonna have my dad locked up."

"Why would Agent Gibbs want to lock your dad up?"

"He thinks my dad is a bad guy. He's not, though. He didn't mean it—" Kyle paused anxiously.

"When he broke your rib?" Tony added. "Didn't mean to punch you in the stomach so hard that you had to go to the hospital?"

"It was an accident!" He almost screamed. "And anyway, it was those jerks at school who really hurt me. They're the ones who made me start bleeding, not Dad."

"The medical examination you went through showed that they only gave you minor injuries. Just because you weren't bleeding on the outside doesn't mean you weren't bleeding internally." Kyle flinched, and Tony allowed himself to smile a bit. "But you're a smart kid, Kyle. You already knew that."

When the boy refused to answer, Tony continued. "In fact, I bet you knew that you needed medical attention, didn't you? But you couldn't blame it on your dad, because then he would go to jail. And then there were these boys who were picking on you, but there was never any evidence to prove it. So what did you do? You provoked them. You made sure they would come after you. That way, you'd get taken to the hospital and they'd get expelled." Tony's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Yup, a really smart kid."

"Did Gibbs find out? Is that why you killed him?"

* * *

><p>"So you agree, Doctor?" Anders asked.<p>

"Please, call me Ducky." The elderly man said. "And yes, I must say it does seem incongruous. This young man is harboring some dark thoughts, but…"

"None of them are for Agent Gibbs."

"Taking that into account with the forensic evidence, it almost seems impossible, doesn't it?" Ducky nodded deeply. "We'll need to talk to Tony."

* * *

><p>"You don't have to answer that, Kyle." The social worker stepped in. "Agent DiNozzo, I don't appreciate the way you're speaking to this child, who clearly doesn't know what he's saying. It's getting very late, and Kyle has been through a lot, with you arresting his father and then accusing him of the same crime. It seems to me that you're grasping at straws." She stood, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Come along, Kyle."<p>

"I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but we have a DNA match, his fingerprints at the scene and on the murder weapon, and a shoe-print all tying him to the murder of an NCIS agent. I'll be happy to place him under arrest officially, of course. It's really just a matter of when." Tony smiled toothily, like a shark attacking its prey. "Now, Kyle, would you like to tell me what happened, or would you like me to arrest you now so you can tell your story to a judge?"

"I…I couldn't stand it." He said, quivering under Tony's glare. "They just kept messing with me. They said bad things about my mom—said she was stupid, and that's why she got herself killed in the car accident. And Dad—he wasn't Dad anymore, but he might get better, if he just had some time. And I was hurt really, really bad. So I called them" he flushed "a-assholes. Out in the hallway, where everyone could hear me. I knew they couldn't hold back if I called them out in public. And then, when the ambulance came, I just said it was them. They were the bad ones, anyway. Not Dad."

"But Gibbs knew that your father was to blame."

"He didn't say anything about it at first. He just reminded me that he was there for me, if I wanted him to be. He started offering to play with me. He let me help on his boat. And sometimes he'd ask me about my dad." There was a light, happy tone to his voice now as he remembered. "It was nice. But then, Dad found his card in my pocket." He rubbed a small hand through his tousled hair. There was a cut on one of his fingers, still healing. "He said that Gibbs didn't even like me. He was just trying to get proof that Dad hurt me." Kyle sounded sad now, hurt. Betrayed. "So I walked around the neighborhood for a while. I had to think about everything. But I was just so mad, I couldn't help it. I went over to his house."

"I went down into his basement, and I started yelling at him. And I got madder and madder, and so I picked up his gun and I shot him. Through the chest. He fell over. There was blood everywhere."

"And then what?" Tony asked.

"I left. I took the gun like you said and I left."

"And the hammer."

"Huh? Oh, right. I took the hammer, too. After I smashed the boat." Kyle said hastily.

"You smashed the boat?" Tony asked. "Why?"

"Because it was a lie. All of it." Kyle said. "And then I cut myself picking up the hammer when it fell into the boat. And then I took it home so I could throw it out." He shook his head angrily. "That was dumb. I should've thrown it in a river, or something, like they do on TV."

Tony frowned. "Did the boat say something?"

"What?" Kyle asked.

"On the side, was there a word painted on the side?"

"No," Kyle said. "We hadn't painted the boat yet. We were supposed to start that day."

"Agent DiNozzo, there's someone who needs to speak with you." The technician's voice crackled over the speaker.

He said, "I'll be back in a moment," then stepped out into the hallway.

Anders and Ducky were standing there, Anders holding a crate full of printouts.

"What's going on? I'm in the middle of an interrogation."

"The kid didn't do it," Anders said. "He's just protecting his father."

"So you're saying the father was only pretending when he tried to protect his kid by falsifying a confession?"

"Well, no," Anders said.

"Captain Gett is innocent." Ducky said. "Neither of them did it."

**A/N: Tune in next time for the exciting explanation from the two profilers. Also, don't hate me for not finishing the case now. As it happens, this is a case fic, so once the case is over, the story is, too, and I've still got a few personal storylines to wrap up. Please leave a note for me in the box below, so that I may continue living.**


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: Ah, my silly readers, what kind of mystery would it be if it were simple? But thank you for making me feel competent in the execution of my first red herring! Hope you enjoy this chapter.**

"Explain," DiNozzo said tersely.

"We've—the doctor and I—been looking through Kyle's journal entries," Anders said. "He kept them archived on his computer. It was apparently assigned to him as an emotional exercise by his psychologist."

"And? What have you found out?" Tony prompted him.

Anders smiled gently. "Kyle Gett is a good kid."

"Oh? Is that the technical term?"

"What I mean to say is that that's how Kyle defines himself." Anders said, gesturing broadly. "He has difficulty socially interacting with his peers…"

"—I've noticed—" Tony interjected wryly.

"So he depends upon adults for companionship and approval. Because adults are in a natural position of power over him, this is a somewhat unbalanced situation. He does not feel as if he can speak to them badly or defy them in any way. He thinks that if he misbehaves, his teachers will stop caring about him and his parents will stop loving him."

"Ever since this young man's mother died, he has been without a parental figure in his life." Ducky continued. "He lost his mother to a car accident and his father to drinking. He thinks that if he could just be good enough, his father will return to his former self.

"Like many good children, he is terrified of being in trouble. He cannot stand conflict and would only confront someone in the most extreme of situations. His father has also drummed it into him that if anyone finds out about the abuse, they will be separated, and Kyle is truly petrified by that idea."

"Sorry to interrupt, Duck, but this is all supporting the kid's story, not breaking it," Tony said. "His father found the card, told him that Gibbs was only spending time with him because he wanted to break up the family. The kid feels betrayed, angry and BAM!—extreme situation."

"That's the problem, though, Boss," Anders said. "Kyle already knew about that."

"What?"

Anders nodded. "He knew Agent Gibbs was concerned for his safety—the two had met before in the original case, after all. Two days after they started spending time together, Kyle writes that he told Gibbs he would never testify against his dad. Gibbs said that he just wanted to help Kyle, make sure he's okay, and that he wasn't going to try to take the Captain away."

"So hearing his dad say that…" Tony started.

"Would mean nothing," Ducky finished. "And there are other little problems with his story as well. He gives you detail about cutting himself but not about shooting Gibbs. He knows that Gibbs was shot in the chest, but he doesn't talk about pulling the trigger, or what Gibbs was saying to him at the time. He doesn't even explain how he got the gun—just that he "picked it up." Where was it?"

"True," DiNozzo agreed. "Gibbs always put his gun in his safe when he got home. He wouldn't leave it out where a kid could reach it. And he only talked about smashing the boat as an afterthought. Besides which, his dad also claims to have destroyed the boat, and he knew there was a word on it. Kyle didn't. But why pretend to kill Gibbs?"

"This boy would do anything to protect his father, even go to jail himself," Anders said. "If he thought that his dad was responsible for Gibbs' death, no matter how much he cared for Gibbs, he'd still feel the need to protect Gett."

"Considering the precise placement of the gunshot wounds, it seems very unlikely that either a chronically drunk man or a young boy with no experience could have been the ones to kill Jethro," Ducky added.

Tony sighed. "Well, I guess I've got an interview to wrap up." He returned reluctantly to his seat at the metal table. "So, Kyle. You lied to me."

"What?" His eyes turned panicky. "No I didn't!"

"You didn't kill Gibbs, and you didn't smash his boat." Tony said monotonously. "You saw what your father had done and you tried to throw us off the scent."

"No, I killed him! I did!" Kyle insisted, voice getting steadily higher.

"You do know that it's a crime to give a false confession? It's considered an obstruction of justice."

"It's not false!" He practically jumped out of his chair.

"Kyle, we know for a fact your dad didn't kill Gibbs." Tony said finally.

"W-what?" He sat back down with a clatter. "He didn't…?"

"Kill him. No." Tony shook his head. "He did do some serious damage to the boat you two were working on. And he ran himself into Gibbs' fist a couple of times."

"So…we're not going to jail?" Kyle asked.

"I could press charges on your dad for destruction of property, and on you for lying and tampering with evidence," Tony said. "Fortunately for you, I'm pretty sure that's not what Gibbs would've wanted." Kyle let out a relieved stream of air. "I do however need to ask you a few questions."

"Like what?" Kyle asked, no longer quite so tense and in full eager-to-help mode.

"What time did you find Gibbs' body?"

"It was a little after 10:30, I think," he said thoughtfully. "I was walking around in the neighborhood, trying to figure out the best way to handle what was going on. I thought maybe I should apologize to Gibbs in person and tell him I wasn't allowed to see him anymore." He sighed.

"But I really didn't want to say that. I knew I would miss him. A lot. Before I knew it, it was dark, and my dad's truck was back in the driveway when I got back home. I realized it was safe to go over then, and I biked over to his house. I didn't think anything was weird at first. The door was open, like always. I went down into the basement. It was super dark, and I didn't see him at first."

His voice lost some of its eagerness. "When I found him, I thought…I thought my dad had done it. I thought he'd killed Gibbs because he thought he was trying to split us up. I…grabbed a grocery bag from the kitchen and I put the gun in it. Then, I saw that the boat was wrecked, so I reached in to get the hammer. That's when I cut myself, like I said. I got back on my bike and went home as fast as I could."

"Did you see anything? Anything weird that maybe you didn't think meant anything at the time?" Tony asked.

Kyle screwed up his eyes in concentration. "I think…there was a car I didn't recognize on the street. I'd been there a bunch of times, and I'd never seen it before. It wasn't parked right in front of the house, though, so it might just be a neighbor's car."

"Can you give me a description?" DiNozzo said, pulling out his notepad.

"Um…black, I guess. A car, not a van or truck. It was really wide, though. That's why I noticed it. And pointy at the corners. It looked kind of old-fashioned. And its headlights looked like big silver eyes."

"I don't suppose you got a license plate?" Tony asked hopelessly.

Kyle just shook his head.

"Well, I guess that's it." Tony stood, gesturing at Kyle to get up. The boy paused at the door, turning back to say,

"I told him about what I did to the guys at school, you know. He didn't ask me to, either. I just…trusted him. I'm really, really sorry, that…" his voice wobbled, "…I'm just sorry."

Tony nodded in his best understanding manner and waved the kid out the door. He may not hate him, but he wasn't going to thank him for the damage he'd done.

As the social security officer got up to accompany Kyle, DiNozzo touched her arm to hold her back.

"Can I help you?" She asked, surprised.

"I'm going to be filing a formal complaint with your office tomorrow. After what you heard today, I'm sure you'll agree that someone needs to keep an eye on his dad."

The woman nodded. "Of course." She turned to leave.

"But—" Tony said through clenched teeth. "Don't take the kid away unless you really have to."

"That is always a last resort, Agent DiNozzo," she said with a soft smile. "We are not in the business of breaking up families." And she followed her charge out the door.

* * *

><p>"So, what do we do now?" Ally asked.<p>

Tony looked up from his computer screen, which had gone blank some time ago. "We go back to the hotel."

"What?" Everyone in the room seemed to say as a single entity.

Tony sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time. "We haven't got any sleep for two nights in a row. We basically just returned to square one. I say we get a decent night's sleep and look at this with fresh eyes in the morning."

A low murmur cycled through the squad room as each agent admitted that this idea sounded pretty good. And with that, for the first time in three days, the two teams started packing up for home.

Tony and his team had gotten into town around the same time, so Anders had just booked four rooms at a nearby hotel in their names. They hadn't even seen them yet. When Ziva came to town, Tony had suggested that she get a room in the same hotel, so they were all heading to the same place, except for McGee, who was "going to drive Abby home and make sure she sleeps there whether she likes it or not."

Exhausted and disheartened, everybody trickled out of NCIS.

**A/N: I didn't want to make this chapter too long, so I stopped a bit earlier than I meant to. Don't worry; we'll be progressing in a less depressing direction come next chapter. Review if you feel like it. :)**


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: Und now, the chapter you have all been waiting for! …Oh wait, no. This isn't the one where the murderer is revealed. But you get something else. Maybe you've been waiting for it, I don't know. See you on the other side, m'kay?**

Ziva toweled off, enjoying the feeling of being clean for the first time in days. She started preparing for bed, but quickly realized that too many things were floating around inside her skull for her to go to sleep right away.

"Three days…" she muttered. "Three days of investigation and all we have now is a smaller time frame for the murder—sometime between 9 and 10:30—and a contaminated crime scene. Oh, and a twelve-year-old's description of a car that might be related to the case." She considered the boy's words. "Really wide…pointy…black…and old fashioned," she muttered. "That could be any number of cars."

She imagined for a moment that she heard the clock on her bedside table ticking away the time she had left to sleep, but of course it was digital. Finally, she stood up, pulled a few pieces of clothing out of her suitcase, and prepared to head down to the hotel bar.

Ziva felt the gazes of several men as she entered the lounge area, but they quickly lost interest as she passed by without a glance. Her eyes locked onto the bar, where she could finally quiet her mind for a little bit of peace.

To her surprise, Tony had apparently had the same idea. He was perched on a bar stool, nursing something golden-colored and chatting with another patron. Ziva felt a gentle smile tugging at her lips until she recognized Tony's drinking companion—Agent Duncan.

_Of course _she_ is here_, Ziva thought. She strode over just the same. As she got closer, she heard a murmured conversation.

"Oh, you know…I'm just so used to having a warm body next to me…" Ally said, her lips almost touching Tony's ear. "I just can't get to sleep alone."

"Well, once this case is over, and everything's back to normal…" Tony began when Ally suddenly straightened up and cast an unwelcoming glare at Ziva.

"Zi-va!" Tony said with exaggerated movements once he had noticed her presence. "Fancing meeting you here." He tossed her a warm, lazy grin that only made the Israeli-American more uncomfortable after what she had overheard.

She forced a smile in return. "I had almost forgotten that we were all staying at this hotel."

"Well, you gonna sit down?" Tony asked with a tipsy wave. "I'd hate to keep drinking alone."

"Alone? And what about Agent Duncan?" She asked stiffly.

"Hmm?" Tony said confusedly. "Oh, Al never drinks anything stronger than root beer," he said idly. Indeed, the girl appeared to be sipping on a club soda. "Come on, you're way behind," he pressed the invitation.

Well, it could not hurt to keep him company…especially if it kept him from talking to her. Ziva settled on the bar stool next to him and waved the bartender over to take her order.

"I might as well have a few drinks," she said. "I cannot sleep anyway."

"Join the club," he said wryly.

* * *

><p>The next day, Ziva was not as refreshed as she might have hoped to be. She had spent a good deal of the night keeping Tony's attention off of his Senior Field Agent. When she finally went to bed, she had even more to think about than before. This time, though, she was determined to do something about it.<p>

She took the stairs three at a time down to Abby's lab, where a peeved but slightly less wired Abby was telling McGee that she had no new results.

"But Ziva texted me saying you had something," He insisted.

"Tim, we spent all night together at my house," she said irritably. "Don't you think I would have told you if I was expecting a breakthrough?"

"Not if you wanted to have a big reveal!" He replied.

"So, I suppose this means we should be on our way?" Ducky asked, standing up and gesturing at Jimmy to follow.

Ziva stepped in and shut the door behind her. "Good, you are all here."

"There you are, Ziva," Abby said. "What's this about?"

"We need to talk about something," Ziva said.

"Shouldn't we wait for Tony, then?" the scientist asked.

"It is not case-related." Ziva said. "I have already spoken to Ducky about it," she nodded to the doctor, "but I am afraid that it is worse than I originally thought."

"What do you mean?" Ducky asked.

"Yeah, tell us what's going on," McGee added.

"At first, I believed that Agent Duncan was in love with Tony—"

"Ooh, that's always awkward," McGee hissed sympathetically.

"But now I…what?" She asked as she realized what McGee had just said.

"What?" He asked when all eyes were suddenly turned on him.

"You said, 'always,' McGee," Abby said sharply. She glared at him and tapped a leather boot on the floor expectantly.

"Well, yeah," he shrugged. "Having a subordinate confuse admiration for something more…it causes problems. For one, it's inappropriate, and for another, it's really hard to handle delicately. I mean, you have to turn them down gently enough that you don't lose them as an agent and firmly enough that they don't still think that they have a chance."

"How many times has this happened to you, dear boy?" Ducky asked.

"That's what I would like to know," Abby agreed with a dangerous undertone to her voice.

"Uh…" McGee had finally gotten the lay of the land, and what he saw wasn't good. "Just…three."

"You only have two women on your team," Abby reminded him.

McGee rubbed the back of is head sheepishly. "Sometimes I help instruct at the gun range."

"I'm sure you do," Abby said, her eyes almost slits.

"Well, McGee's exploits aside," Ziva said, trying to bring the focus back to the present problem, "I have recently come to believe that Tony reciprocates her feelings."

"What?!" Abby said, shocked. McGee seemed grateful for the distraction. "But…how? Why?"

Ziva relayed to them what she had overheard at the bar the night before.

"That is certainly very suggestive," Ducky said musingly, "but are you sure that is what you heard? Eavesdropping in a crowded bar is not the most reliable source of information."

"I was not eavesdropping," she said woodenly, "and it was not that crowded. I know what I heard, Ducky."

"Then that is a problem," Ducky said with a sigh.

"I'll say," McGee said anxiously. "NCIS may not have a problem with agents dating each other, but sleeping with the boss is always against the rules. It could seriously undermine the team's trust and it could wreck Tony's career."

"What do you mean?" Abby said fearfully.

"Well," Ducky interjected, "if it were discovered that Anthony's senior field agent—who also happens to be the youngest agent in his team—is also dating him, it could be argued that he is showing favoritism. He could be accused of serious misconduct, even fired."

Abby's eyes widened in shock. "But—but they can't fire Tony!"

"What is especially strange is that Tony would be willing to sacrifice Ally's career as well," Dr. Mallard continued. "If their relationship were discovered, she might be accused of using her sexuality to gain favors at work. She may not be fired, being the subordinate and therefore less responsible for the situation, but no one would ever trust her again…Anthony must know that, so to think that he would risk having a relationship with her anyway…"

"He must really love her," Jimmy said softly.

Ziva felt a sharp pang when he said that. What if he was right? Was it her place to try to break up Tony's relationship if he truly cared for this girl?

"More likely he is not thinking," she said lightly. "Tony has never been one for keeping to the rules about dating coworkers."

"Yeah, but…I wouldn't think he'd ever risk the safety of his team like that. He takes his responsibility seriously," McGee said. "Besides…no offense, but Ally isn't exactly Tony's type. I mean, she's a lot younger than he is and…well, she's really skinny," he said diplomatically, trying to avoid saying what all of them had thought at one point or another—that Ally was not gifted with a particularly curvaceous body.

"They say that you can tell it's true love when someone is dating someone who's different from their usual type," Jimmy offered.

_Pang_.

"Plus, Tony said in his emails that he wasn't seeing anyone seriously, remember? And with one glaring exception, he's never been very good at keeping his relationships secret." Abby added. "I mean, he mentioned the usual flings, but that was it."

"I have not been receiving his emails," Ziva suddenly announced. She was tired of pretending.

"Huh?" Abby asked.

"For the past three years, I have not corresponded with Tony at all," she said simply.

"Why not?" McGee asked, surprised.

"We had a fight."

"About…?" Abby prodded.

"Thomas." She sighed. "Well, to be fair, it was not so much that we had a fight as it was that I had one.

"You see, my marriage was wonderful at first. We bought a house, went running together every morning, worked together to cook a hot breakfast before we went to work. We ate dinner together every night and talked about our day—as much as we were able, of course. But it never felt different to me. I simply never felt _married_. Or maybe I did and I just do not realize it. How would I know?

I always thought that I would feel as if I was home when I got back from work, or as if Thomas was my family when I looked at him. Instead I felt as if I was pretending; that my boyfriend and I were on a vacation, playing house, and that one day soon, one of us would turn to the other and say, 'All right, I am headed home. I will call you tomorrow.' And, as it is with most relationships, there came a point at which everything began to…wind down, I suppose you could say."

"Um, Ziva, I think you mean wind like a toy, not wind like the weather," McGee pointed out helpfully.

"Same difference, McGee," Ziva said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "Anyway, I found myself beginning to make excuses to work later, to come in on the weekends, all so that I would not have to go home and feel guilty for feeling nothing."

"Why didn't you talk to us?" Abby asked.

"I felt like a failure! I had been married for less than a year and already my marriage had stopped working. After the wedding, after Gibbs had walked me down the aisle and you had all come to support me…how could I say anything?" She shook her head.

"But one night, Tony called me…just to say hello, but he noticed something was wrong. Before I knew it, I was telling him everything. I emailed him almost every day until I realized…"

"Realized what?" Jimmy asked.

"That I liked talking to Tony more than I liked talking to my own husband," She said soullessly. "I felt…terrible, as if I was doing something wrong simply by talking to a friend. And then, a man at the office asked me out because he did not even know I was married—I was in the office so much, he had assumed it was impossible.

"I was angry at myself, at the other agent, and at Tony for—" she laughed mirthlessly, "for being there for me. And so I made a decision to stop all contact. Do you remember those reunions we used to have every year?"

"We didn't _used_ to have them," Abby said somewhat sharply. "You and Tony just stopped showing up."

"He did?" Ziva asked, surprised. "I stopped going because I thought my being there would make it uncomfortable."

"He probably thought the same thing," McGee said.

"Anyway, at the reunion three years ago," she said, "I asked him to talk to me after dinner was over. He seemed so happy—he kept saying he had big news to tell me."

"Oh yes, that was when he hired young Ally, wasn't it?' Ducky said.

"Of course it was," Ziva found herself muttering almost involuntarily. "That happiness just made me feel worse, and suddenly I found myself taking out all of my anger on him.

"_Just stop…stop everything. The emails, the phone calls, the texts. I do not want any of it."_

"_Ziva, I don't get it…what did I do wrong?" Tony asked, concerned. "Just tell me."_

_Ziva looked him in the eyes and said, "I love Thomas. You realize that, do you not?"_

"_Of course," he seemed bewildered._

"_I love my husband, and I will never love you, no matter how much you might wish it!"_

_Tony's eyes filled with pain which he quickly concealed. "I never thought you would, Ziva," he said tonelessly. "I was just trying to help."_

_She felt the anger drain away as she watched him leave, to be quickly replaced with the self-loathing that had become so natural to her lately. "Tony—"_

"_I hope you two are happy together," he said. "I won't interfere anymore."_

"Wow," Jimmy said.

"Yes, I was terrible to him." She sighed.

"No, I meant…I didn't know you liked talking in the third person, too."

"What?" Ziva looked at him oddly, then shook her head to try and put the memory behind her. "From then on, I tried to be a better wife. I went home early, I kept my weekends open as much as possible. But before long, I was returning to the same patterns of avoiding Thomas. He was wonderful, really. Perfect. He never got angry. We never fought, not once. But one day I came home around midnight and he was waiting for me. He said, 'Ziva, I do not think this is working,' and before I knew it, we were divorced." She smiled painfully. "Perhaps I am not meant to be married."

"You _never _fought?" Jimmy chuckled. "Doesn't sound like much of a marriage to me."

"This is not the time for one of your jokes, Dr. Palmer," Ducky chided him.

"What joke?" Jimmy asked. "I really mean that. Breena and I have been married for over five years, and we're more in love than ever, but we fight plenty. You have to sometimes. It's how you address a problem. If you never fight, the problem never changes, and nothing ever gets better. It seems to me that Thomas wasn't very committed to making your marriage work if he never got angry at you for being out all the time."

Everyone stared at him.

"You guys forgot that I'm the only one here who's married, didn't you?" He said, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

A chorus of 'no's quickly filled the air, with a light sprinkling of 'of course not's.

Ziva smiled at him. "Perhaps you are right. I was just so ready to be married—to live the American dream of a house, a white picket fence—cherry pie."

"You mean apple pie," McGee said.

"No, I prefer cherry," Ziva said. "And Thomas and I seemed like such a good fit…but, what am I saying? This was not supposed to be about my car wreck of a marriage,"

McGee opened his mouth to say something, but decided better of it.

"It was supposed to be about the 'Agent Duncan' problem. What are we going to do?"

"If what you say is true, there is no 'maybe' about it anymore. We have to talk to Anthony and try to help him with this problem, before he does irreparable damage to his team and his career."

"McGee can give him advice on how to break it off," Abby said pointedly.

"Abby—"

"Or, if he really does care so much for her, we can advise him to at least have her transferred to a different team. I know that he relies on her, but he cannot have it both ways."

"The moment this case is closed, we're staging an intervention," Abby announced.

**A/N: So, yeah. Not much case development in this chapter, but I wanted to give you a better idea of what's been going on in the past few years. Also, this exchange has been all-but-written for months and has been trying to force its way out of my head. So, keep tuning in as the murderer's capture and the Ziva/Ally showdown fast approaches! **


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: This chapter is dedicated to that dude who fixed my computer so that it recognizes that the internet exists! Yay, that dude! :)**

As McGee and Ziva stepped out of the elevator into the squad room, furiously muttering a conversation under their breaths, Tony looked askance at them.

"Where have you guys been?" He asked.

"Nowhere," McGee answered quickly.

Glancing back at the elevator, Tony asked, "Does nowhere have something for us?"

"No," Ziva shook her head. "It was nothing important," she said, a slight, almost imperceptible sadness tingeing her voice as she laid her bag down on one of the vacant desks.

"Okay," DiNozzo answered dubiously. "Well, don't get too comfortable. Vance wants us up in his office ASAP."

"Us?" McGee asked. "As in…all three of us?"

Ziva smiled. "You did not really think he would not notice us, did you?" She turned to Tony. "Is he ordering us to leave everything to your team?"

He shook his head. "He sounded pissed, but not about you guys. I'm pretty sure he figured on all this happening. I think it's got something to do with the case."

* * *

><p>The three agents entered the Director's office as his secretary waved them in.<p>

"Shut the door," Vance said tersely and gestured for them to sit down.

"We prefer to stand," McGee said.

Vance gave a noncommittal jerk of his head, then flopped a manila folder on his desk between them.

Tony picked it up, asking, "What's this?"

"A file."

"Thanks, I kinda figured that out for myself." There was a strong tension in the air. Vance was clearly upset about something.

"Just read it, DiNozzo." He said irritably.

Inside was a picture of a large black car. A Cadillac, 1965. A Coupe Deville. License plate: DF8965.

"You think that this is our car?" Ziva asked, reading over Tony's shoulder. "It matches the description that Kyle Gett gave us, but so many other cars in the D.C. area.

"I saw the BOLO you sent out," was the Director's tight reply. "At first, I hoped it might be a coincidence, but—"

"With all due respect, sir, I don't believe in coincidences." Tony announced. Ziva and McGee rolled their eyes behind him.

"Neither do I, DiNozzo." Vance sat back in his chair with a tired sigh. "What I'm about to tell you cannot leave this room, per the direct order of the United States Secretary of the Navy. You may apprise your team of the situation, but no further spread of information will be tolerated. Am I clear? This will not be like your blatant disobedience of my instructions to stay away from this case," he finished with a pointed glance at the two insubordinate agents, although he seemed to be fighting back a smile as he said it.

"We get it. We're talkin' top secret stuff here." Tony said, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

"Three weeks ago, the SECNAV visited Leavenworth as part of an inspection. There had been complaints of laxity on the part of security personnel. For personal reasons, the SECNAV was driving his private vehicle rather than a government one, and in the course of the visit, an escape occurred. The convict—"

"Wait a second, that's not possible." McGee interrupted him. "There was no report of a breakout, and that would make national news. All of NCIS would be on alert!"

"I assure you, it happened, Agent McGee. Due to the sensitive nature of the incident, the prison chose not to go public with the breakout. There is a newly formed squad of highly trained NCIS agents working to track this guy and bring him back to where he belongs. Now, if I may continue?"

When McGee nodded, he went on, "The convict managed to escape undetected and hijack the SECNAV's vehicle while holding the Secretary himself hostage. He released him once the security guards pulled back and allowed him to pass the prison gates. Attempts to recapture him proved unsuccessful, but the Secretary was uninjured. Because of the possibility of a public panic if it were revealed that the security at Leavenworth has a weak spot and that an escapee had successfully taken a member of the Cabinet hostage, the decision was made not to disclose any information." His voice practically shook with anger as he said this last sentence. He composed himself before asking,

"Any questions?"

"So what you're saying is that because the SECNAV was too embarrassed to let people know about a major screw-up, Gibbs is dead?" DiNozzo's voice was more controlled, but his tightly balled fists and clenched teeth suggested otherwise.

"Unfortunately, yes." Vance responded quietly.

"But what's the motive?" McGee asked. "What did this guy have against Gibbs?"

"And more importantly, where is he now?" Ziva asked.

**A/N: So, this chapter's a bit shorter than usual but I'm planning on updating it pretty soon. Let me know what you think!**


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N: Hi…Um…Here's Chapter 20. Hope you enjoy.**

"Robert McCauley, age 42, formerly a Marine Lance Corporal before his arrest at the age of 25 for beating his CO to death with his bare hands. Dishonorable discharge," Anders reported.

"Of course," Ally said.

"Psych evaluations suggest that he had anger control problems preventing him from rising up the ranks as much as he had hoped. When his CO refused to recommend him for promotion, he lost control and killed him."

Ally took over, "He went on the run but was quickly apprehended by Special Agent Gibbs' team within five hours. The officer's blood was all over his clothes, he had no alibi and several of his fellow Marines attested to his having a meeting scheduled for the time of the murder. It was an open-and-shut case."

"He was sentenced to life in Leavenworth," Lex continued. "He remained there for 17 years until a breakdown in security allowed him to escape in the Secretary of the Navy's personal vehicle. The vehicle has been confirmed to have been seen in the vicinity of Agent Gibbs' home around the estimated time of the murder—Kyle Gett has gone on record saying that the car was there when he entered the house, but gone when he left."

"Any prior arrests?" DiNozzo asked.

"His record was sealed, but yeah," McGee said. "Two assault and battery charges as a minor. He received community service on both counts."

"He does not seem like the type of person to commit premeditated murder," Ziva said.

"He does seem like the type to hold a grudge, though," Tony said. "And 17 years is a long time—people change."

"Thanks to the Getts, we've lost any chance at physical evidence. The second set of prints in the basement isn't in any database and whatever might have been left behind during the crime was wrecked when Kyle moved things around," Ally pointed out.

"I think our priority right now should be catching him," Anders said. "He's an escaped convict with a life sentence, so even if we don't have anything on him, we can still get him back in jail where he belongs."

"That's easier said than done," DiNozzo said. "The SECNAV refuses to let us amp up media attention on this case, and anything that lets other agencies—even other NCIS agents—in on the fact that Leavenworth had a breakout is out of the question. We're the only ones who know, aside from a clandestine NCIS team he set up just to get this done discreetly." He managed once again to keep his temper from boiling over, but just barely.

A defeated feeling seemed to saturate the room as he said this. But they knew he was right; short of going out and patrolling themselves, there was little they could do to find McCauley.

"Why don't we fake it?" McGee asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, put out an APB of him with a false name. That way we get the support of other agencies without letting anyone know about the SECNAV's screw-up."

"That could work," Tony said, brightening up a bit.

"But," Ziva said, frustrated, "He has no credit cards, no cell phone, and for all we know he has switched cars by now. No money has been withdrawn from his accounts, either," she added, pulling everyone back down to earth.

And beneath that feeling of helplessness was the sense that all this was somewhat pointless anyway. Because what Anders had said was right; the most they could do is put McCauley back in prison, where he would serve out his original sentence. Gibbs' death would mean nothing to the criminal justice system.

Tony sat at his desk, massaging his temples.

"Where's he getting the money to move around?" He asked finally. "How did he manage to make a trip from Kansas City to D.C. without stopping for gas?"

"He cannot have many contacts in the area; he was unmarried, his parents are both deceased, and he was an only child." Ziva said. "According to prison logs, he has not received a visitor in over a decade. Who would be willing to supply him with money?"

"Maybe he's stealing it," Lex suggested. "He could be robbing convenience stores…"

"With what?" Ally asked. "He used Gibbs' gun to kill him, then left it behind. He can't have gotten a weapon without having money in the first place. Besides, convenience stores are covered in security cameras, like most cash-heavy businesses. He would be risking serious exposure every time."

"Some criminals keep a store of cash and a weapon in a safe place for when they get out of jail," Lex said.

"He didn't have time for something like that. He killed a guy in the heat of the moment then got caught. There's no way he's doing this without outside support."

"She's right," Tony said. "McCauley has to be getting help from someone."

"It would explain his change in M.O.," Anders agreed. "For an impulse killer with anger control issues, it's a huge leap to calculated murder. It makes more sense if he has an accomplice pulling his strings."

"It also means they have to be keeping in contact somehow," McGee said. "Like with a burn phone or an online chat room. It would take time to plan something like this; they probably orchestrated the escape together. If we can look at his internet activity leading up to the breakout…"

"Not to mention that when two people are involved, it is that much easier to _break_ one of them," Ziva said ferociously.

"All right," Tony said, "McGee, Anders—"

"Get in touch with Leavenworth and comb through all internet interactions, phone calls, on it," McGee responded quickly.

"And get Abby's help, we need all hands on deck," Tony added. "Lex—"

"Post an APB for McCauley under a false identity saying he's suspected of murdering a federal agent and was last seen in possession of a stolen car in the D.C. area," he said. "Got it."

"Al—"

"Find out and coordinate with whoever's heading up the NCIS task squad in charge of the investigation." She nodded.

"What about me?" Ziva asked.

"You and I are gonna go pay a visit to our favorite politician," Tony said with a dangerous smile.

**A/N: So, we finally get to meet my SECNAV next chapter. In case you were wondering (and I know at least one of you was :) this is not the same SECNAV from the show. It's a made-up SECNAV. His name is Paul. Why? Because I like that name.**


	21. Chapter 21

"Tony! Calm down," Ziva urged as the Special Agent pushed his way into the waiting room of the man who could destroy his career in an instant.

The secretary, an older woman who seemed strangely unaffected by the anger in DiNozzo's voice as he said, "He's expecting us," waved them in without a second glance.

The Secretary of the Navy, Paul Atwood, was older, graying, and seemed to consider their sudden intrusion—for he had not been expecting them in the least—a pleasant surprise.

"You must excuse me, Lieutenant," he told the corpsman currently holding his attention, "I forgot that I had made an appointment with these—" He paused, allowing Tony to supply the answer of "NCIS agents," before giving the man a benign, almost grandfatherly smile and waving him out of the room.

Turning to face the intruders once again, he asked, "Well, how can I help you, agents?" His smile seemed to lose some of its brightness. "I trust it's important."

"Very." Tony said with an equally insincere grin, "You see, we're the ones working the Gibbs case."

The older man's face appeared to soften slightly. "Ah, yes. I've been in contact with your director about that. Too bad, really; he was one of our best agents."

"I'm glad to hear you think so now, Director," Tony said, not backing down at all.

"Now? Have we met before?" He returned, mildly confused.

"It was over five years ago," Ziva said, placing a hand on Tony's shoulder. "And it is not what we came here to discuss."

"Yeah, we actually wanted to try and get you to stop screwing with our case," Tony said, tacking on a "sir" when Ziva's hand started to squeeze.

"It you're referring to my insistence that you treat a decorated officer with respect instead of letting him stew like a common criminal, then I'm afraid you won't be satisfied with my answer, Agent-?" He let the question hang, the smile on his face a ghost of its former self.

"DiNozzo. And this is Special Agent David." Tony said with a jerk of his head in her direction. "Actually, sir, we were thinking more along the lines of how you covered up a prison break that led directly to the death of an NCIS agent," he said matter-of-factly.

The SECNAV's face drained, and any trace of a smile disappeared. "I specifically told Director Vance that this case was to be investigated on a need-to-know basis with all participants subject to my approval. I am disappointed that he made this decision, but I can assure you that this case has nothing to do with yours."

"Really? 'Cause we have an eyewitness placing your stolen vehicle at the scene of the crime around the time that the murder occurred. We also know that Gibbs was your escapee's arresting agent." He smirked, watching his superior become paler and paler with each word. "Now, all we're asking is that you tell us what happened at the time of the escape so we can find this guy."

"I cannot and will not discuss this with you," the man blustered. "How reliable is your witness? Because I find it very hard to believe…"

"Believe it," Tony said. "I'm not saying I won't keep your little secret, I'm just asking for a quick rundown of what happened. Did your guards see anything unusual? Did McCauley happen to mention where he was going?"

The Secretary refused to budge and had opened his mouth to make another pronouncement when—

"Let us just leave, Tony." Ziva said with a sigh.

"What?!" Tony demanded.

"Clearly, the Secretary cannot discuss this matter with us," she said simply. "We will just have to find someone else who has seen Robert McCauley. I am sure there are plenty of witnesses; it is just a matter of _finding_ them," she continued, squeezing his arm a bit more gently this time.

"I guess," Tony said thoughtfully, "but how would we go about it?"

"Oh, you know," Ziva said with a smile, "A press conference, a tip hotline…the usual."

"You do that and you'll be guilty of insubordination!" The SECNAV announced in panicked tones.

"Perhaps," Ziva agreed, "but if there is anything I have learned since becoming an American citizen, it is that the news media has a great deal of influence on the workings of the United States government. If we brought this to the public's attention, they might focus on our disobedience, or…"

"They might prefer to take a closer look at the victim," Tony chimed in. "A former Marine, specialized service, a Silver Star recipient,"

"Not to mention the awards he has been given for his service as an NCIS agent," Ziva continued with a sly smile.

"A whole drawer full," Tony grinned.

"And then they will look at you, and they will most likely see yet another greasy Washington politician trying to hide his mistakes from the American people," she cocked her head to the side and made a show of looking the Secretary up and down. "How do you think you will measure up?"

"Uh…greasy?" Tony asked.

"You do not agree?"

"Eh…" he said cautiously. "It's not exactly wrong, but…did you maybe mean sleazy?"

"No, I was trying to imply that he is somewhat oily."

"Well, now, oily works. Just say that."

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Why is 'oily' okay but not 'greasy'?"

He shrugged. "'Greasy' makes it sound like maybe you just think he needs to bathe more often…'oily' is more like a snake."

Her forehead furrowed slightly. "Snakes are not oily."

"It's a nuance, okay? Just trust me." He turned to face the SECNAV. "Anyway, once the press gets a hold of this, I give you two, three days maybe before the administration 'asks' for your resignation."

"I think you are underestimating the power of scandal," Ziva argued. "I would not give him a full day."

"You could be right. Well, I guess there's only one way to find out." He and Ziva stood up in unison and took their first steps for the door.

"Fine!" Atwood said at last. "I will…read you in. So long as I am assured," he asserted, "that our conversation will stay between us."

"Of course, Mr. Secretary," DiNozzo said, suddenly all innocence. "Whatever you say."

**A/N: Next time, stuff. Soon. Cross my heart. Not that I'm feeling guilty or anything...**


	22. Chapter 22

"Okay," Anders said, setting his phone back in its cradle. "According to prison records, McCauley had a few minor run-ins with other prisoners early on in his sentence, but since then he's chilled out considerably…probably because he didn't win a single fight."

"Makes sense," McGee said. "Compared to the other Lifers, he was pretty small potatoes. One-time offender, all impulse, no planning, not to mention he was caught almost immediately afterward. Sure, he's dangerous to someone who doesn't expect the attack, but his type wouldn't be able to hack it as a tough guy in prison. He'd probably get himself killed instead."

"Which is why he went the good behavior route," Anders continued. "He kept his nose clean, stopped blowing up at people, even went into therapy. Got a lot of privileges because of it. Internet access, more phone time."

"And that's why we have all this wonderful history to sift through," Abby moaned, scrolling down her screen to take in the sight of the pages and pages of websites the man had visited in the past few months.

"You know, the task squad that's working this case has a two-week head start," McGee said. "They must have found something we could use, right? At least to point us in the right direction."

"Good luck asking them," Ally said, stepping into the lab. "Turns out, this team doesn't even report to the Director. He knows who they are, but they've been handled strictly by SECNAV's office. No direct contact with other agents, plus they were picked for their lack of other connections—people who'll wonder where they've gone, like spouses or children. I've talked to their coworkers, but nobody's heard anything since the day after the breakout. They've gone completely dark."

"You think something happened to them?" Anders asked.

"I think this is about more than just politics," she said, shaking her head. "I think the Secretary of the Navy has decided that this operation has national level importance…he's restricted the need-to-know pool to just a few people, he's keeping the team completely off the radar…what does it mean when somebody won't even share info with his own people?"

"A leak," McGee breathed. "He thinks it's more than just a breakout; he thinks it's an inside job."

"It's worse than that!" Abby exclaimed, "He thinks it's one of us! An NCIS agent. Which means one of our own could have had a hand in killing Gibbs…"

"That's not all," Agent Duncan added. "When I said his own people, I meant his staff, his security…no one has seen this team, has even heard of it, except us, Director Vance and the Secretary. As far as Atwood is concerned, this is bigger than just one convict and his accomplice. This is full-blown infiltration."

"But why? Why all this trouble for Robert McCauley?" McGee asked. "He wasn't connected, he didn't have any friends left, he wasn't especially skilled…he was just a dime a dozen murderer. Why was he so special? And what was this all about?"

* * *

><p>"I wasn't even supposed to be at that prison," Atwood said thoughtfully. "It's not exactly my job to inspect Navy installations like that. No, we have experts, better suited than me, for that kind of thing," he said with a sigh.<p>

"So why go?" DiNozzo asked.

"It was a favor," he said helplessly. "The warden happens to be a personal friend of mine. I was going to be in town anyway to visit my daughter and her family, and some of the guards were making a fuss about the security glitches. Said it wasn't safe."

"They were right," Ziva pointed out. "A man escaped."

He shook his head. "It wasn't that kind of glitch. It was just a few blank spots. A few seconds, maybe a minute at the most, when one of the surveillance cameras would go dark. It would be in a corridor or out in the yard. Nowhere near any entrances. The guards were just worried a fight would start and they wouldn't be there in time to stop one of the prisoners from hurting or even killing someone."

"And that's no big deal in your book," DiNozzo laughed mirthlessly.

"It was a big deal, of course it was." He insisted. "The whole system was going to be overhauled the next month. I was just supposed to go in, make an appearance, smooth a few ruffled feathers, and then get back to my vacation.

"But when I returned to my car, there was McCauley in the passenger seat. With a gun. My gun." Prompted to go on by an impatient hand wave, he continued, "I kept it in the car for security reasons. He told me to call off my security team and drive him out of the prison boundaries. I did what he said, we drove on for a bit. Then I jerked the steering wheel. To surprise him.

"He lost his balance, I grabbed the gun, we struggled. Somehow he got my door open and shoved me out of the car, gun and all. I rolled a ways; the car had still been moving. Before I knew what happened, he moved over to the driver's side and drove off."

"And then you went into P.R. mode and decided what? That it was too embarrassing?" DiNozzo asked.

"I know that's how you all see me, as someone who cares only about how he appears to others. And I do care about that to some extent. I care because it's my job. But this wasn't about image." He squared his shoulders. "This was about catching the person alerting them that I was on to them."

"He held you at gunpoint, I'm pretty sure he knew you were after him."

"Not McCauley. Whoever helped him escape." SECNAV leaned forward over his desk, lower his voice to a confidential whisper. "His accomplice."

"We know he had help. We also know that catching him would probably get you closer to finding out who helped him." Ziva pointed out.

"Maybe, but it was doubtful. This guy's too good" Atwood said. "And even if we brought him in, I was afraid he'd be compromised before anybody had a chance to interview him. McCauley wasn't the point, anyway; he was a test."

"A test?" Tony echoed skeptically.

"Whoever did this knew when someone would be in the area who could be used as a hostage to escape the prison. They knew that I would be on vacation, guaranteeing I'd be in my personal car instead of my government vehicle. They knew the security would be more relaxed, and they knew where my personal gun was."

"Like in the glove compartment?" Tony grimaced. "I hate to tell you, but it's not that hard—"

"I kept it concealed in one of my seat cushions. You wouldn't know it was there unless someone had told you about it. That's privileged information. So you see? It had to be someone in my team. Someone with enough access to know personal details about me, including who my friends are and what kind of favors I'd be willing to do. They had access to the prison itself, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were behind the surveillance problems all along—which means they would have been able to do a lot more with the security than just block a few feeds.

"And I got to thinking, who would do that for a nobody like Robert McCauley? The guy's been in there 17 years without a single visit. So he must be a test. Proof that this guy can get the job done without getting caught. And with this kind of control over the system, they could do some real damage next time."

"There was 'real damage' this time," Tony said through clenched teeth.

"I know. And I'm very sorry about Gibbs' death. But I assure you, if I had thought for a moment—"

"Yeah, I don't think that's your specialty," Tony interrupted.

"Agent DiNozzo, I understand that you are upset, and so I will pretend I did not hear that." Atwood said firmly. "McCauley had no money, no ID, no weapon, a stolen car, and a prison jumpsuit. I thought for sure he'd get caught for speeding or trying to cross a border. It never occurred to me that he might go after anyone."

"Like his arresting officer?" Ziva said in disbelief.

"The man never once looked up his own case records while he was in prison. All he cared about was getting by. I was sure he was a test. A throwaway. I was more concerned with the person behind the breakout. I gathered up five NCIS agents and I put them in deep cover in my office and at Leavenworth to try and dig something up. If a manhunt had been started, everything would have become public and the guy would have disappeared. I am sorry, but I still believe that I had the right priorities in this case."

"And what have your agents managed to dig up in the weeks you had to stop a man from being killed?" Tony asked softly. "Anything?"

"It's not that simple, Agent DiNozzo. This is an intelligent person who has completely covered their tracks. You can't find them just like that—"

"Really?" ZIva said with a falsely bright smile. "Because according to this text," she showed him her cell phone screen, "Our team just discovered that McCauley was accessing an encrypted site. Probably the same site he was using to contact your mastermind." Turning to Tony, she asked, "Shall we?"

"If that's all," Tony said, glaring at the Secretary. The man sighed again, nodded. "Then we shall," he said, standing up beside Ziva.

As the two agents exited the room with a crash of door against wall, the older man slumped tiredly back into his chair.

**A/N: Bonjour, tout le monde! Very soon, it will be my story's first birthday. They grow up so fast :'(. Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. What exactly did McGee and Abby find? Tune in to find out! Reviews make me happy when I'm all alone in a foreign country…**


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N: Joyeux anniversaire, joyeux anniversaire…**

"Um, Abby?"

"Yes, Tony?"

"What exactly am I looking at?"

She gave him a curious look. "What does it look like?"

"A blank screen," Tony said slowly.

"Oh." She turned back to her computer. "Well, that's what it is."

"Abby…" He said, a hint of warning in his voice.

"What she means is, it's blank now," McGee interjected. "See, it's a chat room—you know, for instant messaging—"

"I do know that, McGee," Tony said.

"Anyway, it's hidden…totally encrypted. It's set up to look like a…well, like a porn site."

"Well, that makes perfect sense," Ziva said ironically.

"So anyway," McGee continued, "we had to check every single URL to see if there was anything hinky. Something like this is pretty normal fare for a guy stick in prison, so people would usually pass it over. It was suspicious, though, because he only started frequenting this site a few weeks ago. And when I—" Abby cleared her throat, "I mean, when we looked a little closer it became pretty obvious that the site was just a façade. But once we cracked it, there wasn't anything there. I—we—figure the chat room is programmed to dump its contents every few hours or so. Abby's trying to see if any of the data can be recovered."

"If it was so easy to get into, why hasn't the SECNAV's team of super agents figured it out yet?" Tony asked.

"Easy?" Abby said sharply. "You think that it was easy?" Her head slowly rotated a full 180 degrees. "Do you know how many layers of encryption there were? All McCauley had to do was put in a password and bam! He's in. We had to break in, piece by piece."

"But you guys did it in like, three hours," Tony pointed out, cringing slightly.

"Yeah, because we had three people with top-level knowledge of computers. We're talking government level encryption, Tony. It's not something just anyone could do."

"Was it really that difficult, Abby?" Ziva asked concernedly.

"Um, not really, no," McGee said. "Once we knew what we were looking at, it was actually pretty straightforward. It was finding that site from about 100 our guy visited that was the hard part."

"Then why…?"

"The point is, it's only looks like it's easy because we're so good at what we do," Abby said irritably. "I doubt that the kind of agents Atwood would pick could even touch our skills." She turned back to her work with a very audible 'hmph!'

"Sorry," Tony said dubiously, backing away in surrender.

Gesturing to his friends to move closer, McGee lowered his voice and said, "To be honest, I think she's a little…strung out. She's been pretty grumpy all day. Just…try to be delicate, okay?"

"She get enough sleep last night?" Tony asked, worry furrowing his brow.

"She had a few nightmares," McGee admitted. "Couldn't get back to sleep right away. I think, all in all, she got about four hours."

"Better than I got," Tony said. "But at least mine was straight through."

"And I doubt all the caffeine is helping," Ziva said. "She needs time to rest."

"We all do," McGee agreed.

"Not me. Not until we catch this McCauley bastard and whatever spook is pulling his strings, I don't," Tony said firmly.

"Speaking of which—I have to say I'm starting to agree with Atwood about this stuff," McGee said. "The whole inside conspiracy thing, I mean. When Abby said government-level encryption, she wasn't just offering it up as a comparison. It was actually legitimate U.S. government code. That's why it was so simple to break; we've done it plenty of times before."

"So he's actually on the right track," Tony said irritably. "Not that he's sharing any of the things his little team is supposed to be digging up."

"Hey, guys?" Abby called.

"I know you are upset, Tony, but we have more important things to worry about than SECNAV's inability to share," Ziva said. "Has Baxter gotten anything from the APB?"

"Nada," Tony said. "Whoever helped McCauley escape must be helping him cover his tracks, 'cause there hasn't a single been a single hit." He ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Every time I think we catch a break on this case, something stalls us. I'm starting to think maybe someone's trying to sabotage our investigation."

"Guys!" Abby said.

"I know what you mean," Ziva replied. "It feels like there is nothing for us to do but wait for someone else to throw us a stone."

"Er…yeah," McGee said. "We catch two suspects lying about the crime, neither of whom did it. We find the car but the case is classified. We find the killer's method of communication with his accomplice but it's totally wiped clean, and both of them are in the wind. We might as well be going in circles."

Suddenly, Anders appeared behind Tony, waiting patiently to be noticed. When his boss turned to look, he jumped half a foot in the air.

"Ian, we've talked about this," he said, hand on his chest. "Too quiet."

"Sorry, Boss. It's just that Miss Sciuto—"

"Abby," the scientist prompted from her post.

"Yes, Abby, I mean," he continued, "would suggest for you to stop ignoring her because you might be missing something important."

"Oh, okay," Tony said, turning to face a disgruntled Abby. "Why didn't you just say something?"

Aside from a slight whitening of her knuckles as she clenched them tight, Abby gave no sign that she had heard what he said. Instead, she gestured in her best dramatic fashion at the projection on the wall of the lab, where the blank white screen had quite spontaneously filled itself with text.

"Come on foot to WH 6 Norfolk IP at 0700 to receive final package. APB is circulating with your description, so take no unnecessary risks. As discussed, our arrangement is concluded upon reception," McGee read aloud.

"Warehouse six at…Norfolk international port?" Tony said. "Unless it's in code?"

"Why encode it?" Ziva asked. "It is already encrypted. Who would be able to intercept it?"

"Still, let's not get too excited. They know about the APB, which means they definitely have someone on the inside," McGee pointed out. "They could have eyes on our investigation."

"But they do not know that we have been read in on the case by SECNAV," Ziva argued. "Which means that as far as they know, we simply have an eyewitness account and no idea who our suspect actually is."

They both turned to look at Tony. "Well?" They said simultaneously.

He frowned. "You're both right. There's no way we pass this up, but we can't be sure it's not a trap. We wait till it's dark, get into position a few hours ahead. That way we make sure there's no time to set up anything, and we can be in place to take down McCauley when the time comes."

"And until then?" Anders asked.

"We try to sneak in a few hours back at the hotel."

"What?" Everyone looked at him in surprise.

"You read that message; this is our last chance to catch this guy before he leaves for good. We can't blow that just because we're all dragging from lack of sleep."

"What if there's another message?" Abby asked. "What if I'm not here?"

"Jimmy's been volunteering to help any way he can. He can watch it while you're asleep." Tony said. The other agents just stared confusedly. He did his best imitation of the Gibbs glare and said, "Move out, people! Now!"

**A/N: So there you go. THE CLIMAX APPROACHES! Review if you're looking forward to the big takedown. Or if you're not. :) Pleeeeeeeeassse?**


	24. Chapter 24

Ziva fumed silently. It had gone too far. She could understand an office crush, but this…

If she hadn't seen it herself, she wouldn't have believed it. She would have held out hope that maybe, just maybe, it had all been a misunderstanding.

But she was a professional, and there were more important things to deal with right now. As she strode into the NCIS offices at just after 3 a.m., she felt like her mood was reflected in the darkness everywhere she looked.

_No wonder he was so insistent about the hotel, _she found herself thinking again. _Focus!_ She commanded sharply.

Tony was there, gathering up gear, checking vests. His team was on standby, Ally at the forefront of the three-man group. As Ziva walked up, the young woman's eyes seemed to lock onto her face. They were narrowed into thin slits, and she opened her mouth, about to say something, when a yawn overtook her.

"Late night?" Tony chuckled.

"No worse than usual," she smiled, shrugging and rubbing one eye.

"Agent DiNozzo," Ziva said tersely. "Are we ready to go?"

"Oh, hey, Ziva," he said in surprise. "Sorry, I didn't realize you had shown up."

"I wonder why," Ziva muttered.

"Just a second, we're waiting on McGee. He's on with his team; since we're going into Norfolk they can be there to provide backup." He turned back to his team, giving last minute instructions that Ziva didn't hear because she was preoccupied by the long, blonde hair that clung to the back of his shirt. She fought the urge to lean forward and grab it as evidence. Before she could, however, he was putting on his bulletproof vest and turning around to hand her one.

He seemed to pick up on her distraction because he asked, "You okay? You seem a little out of it."

"I am fine," Ziva said with a weak smile. "I am just looking forward to this case being over, that is all."

"Me, too," he sighed. "This is our only chance to put this to bed for good. I just hope it isn't a trap…"

"Hey," McGee called breathlessly as he clattered down the stairs from MTAC. "Heather and Callie are set to meet us there. They've already got eyes on the drop point."

"All right, I guess we can head out," Tony said. "Jimmy says there were no new messages while we were sleeping so the plan stays the same. We'll be taking two cars, so I'll be driving me and my team there…you guys can divide it up however you want," he told Ziva and McGee with a mischievous grin.

Before McGee could make a suggestion, Ziva had snatched the keys off the desk for herself.

"Guess that's settled," Tony said cheerily.

* * *

><p>"I'm just saying," McGee said, cringing as the tire went over a curb and knocked down a newspaper rack, "maybe you made a mistake. I find it hard to believe that he would—" A sudden turn forced him back in his seat and cut off his breath.<p>

"I do not want to talk about it," Ziva said. "I merely wanted to inform you of what I saw."

"What you think you saw," McGee insisted.

"You were not there, McGee," she said.

"Well, no," McGee admitted, "but that's why I can't help but think that maybe your eyes were playing tricks on you. We're all pretty tired, after all."

"I am fine." She said, stone-faced. "And we are not here to talk about Tony's idiocy. We are here to catch Gibbs' killer."

He sat back in his seat almost as quickly as if she'd gone round another curve, face suddenly just as her stern as hers. "I'm aware of that," he said tonelessly.

Ziva's expression cracked a bit. "I am sorry, Tim. I know that it is easier to be…distracted."

"No, you're right," McGee sighed. "As much as I'd rather think about the dumb things Tony does, we can't afford it right now." His stomach dropped as his thoughts went back to the fact that this was it; that if they failed—

"There are still 40 minutes until we reach the warehouse," Ziva said, breaking into his reverie. "There is nothing to say that we cannot talk about other things until then."

McGee allowed himself a small smile. "Did you hear what Abby plans to do about all this?"

"Knowing Abby, it will be something big," Ziva smiled back.

* * *

><p>The cars pulled up a few blocks from the warehouse. A young woman, tall and red-haired, stood waiting for them on the sidewalk. They treaded carefully, but each footstep, each breath of air seemed to echo in the silence of the early morning.<p>

McGee had barely looked at the female agent before she went into full report mode, standing straight and rigid and keeping her voice to a stage whisper.

"No sign of anybody coming in or out of the warehouse for the past two hours, and Callie and I did a quick sweep of the interior just to be safe. No traps, no bombs, and no sign of a package, either."

"So there's still a chance we might catch the guy at the other end of the drop," McGee said. "Good work, Heather."

Even in the dark, a small blush was visible on her cheeks at those words. "Just doing my job, Boss," she said quickly, trying to hide her pleasure. "We staked out a couple of vantage points that should allow us to watch the whole warehouse. I'll show you."

As Heather turned around, McGee cast a quick glance at the others, silently hoping that no one had noticed. From the way Tony's eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline, that was not a safe bet.

They split into groups, with Tony and McGee watching the entrance, McGee's team watching the back end, Anders and Ziva taking one side and Lex and Ally taking another. They ran a quick check on comms and settled into their respective posts.

"And now, we wait," Tony said.

* * *

><p>Three hours later, the adrenaline that had kept them alert and ready for action had all but faded. When called to report, "Nothing," was the standard response.<p>

"I'm starting to think that maybe this is all just a diversion," Tony said suddenly. "There's no trap, no drop, no nothing. Maybe McCauley's partner just wanted us out of the way while he sneaks the guy over a border or on a plane."

"But we had no leads, Tony," McGee pointed out. "There's no need to get us out of the way when we have no idea where he is. Plus, we didn't draw on a lot of agency resources, so it's not like having us gone even makes a dent in the capacity for response."

"I wonder if Abby has something new," Tony said, defeated. "Maybe she can give us a lead. Or tell us if the guy decided to postpone the meet."

"She would've called."

Suddenly, a crackling voice shook them out of their gloom.

"Boss?" Lex said. "We have movement, south side."

"Are you sure?" He asked, scrambling for his radio. "Do we know who it is?"

"It is McCauley," came Ziva's response. "I am positive."

A moment later, a small buzz told Tony she'd just sent him a picture on his cell. The man in the photo was shadowy—the sun hadn't come up just yet, and the lighting wasn't great—but the face was clear. It was McCauley.

It looked like he wasn't suffering any hardship. He had on nice clothes, a warm coat, boots. His hair was well-trimmed, not a strand out of place. Still, he seemed uncomfortable. He was restrained, leaning over, trying to keep his face out of sight and clinging to the warehouse wall at the same time. He carried a duffle bag over one shoulder.

"He's headed towards the entrance," Lex reported.

"We got him," McGee said.

"What's our move? Grab him, or wait and see if someone comes to meet him?"

"He's not getting past us," Tony said. "Might as well give it some time, see if we can't catch the bastard-in-chief."

They watched as the fugitive slunk through the door. Ten minutes passed, and apparently that was enough for McCauley to think something was wrong, because he ran out of the building like it was on fire, looking in every direction, twitching as he did.

"Guess we'll have to settle for him," Tony said. "All agents converge. We're taking him down."

Swiftly and quietly, they ran to surround McCauley. A glint of light reflected off of a drawn gun caught his attention, and before the team could so much as blink, he had picked up the duffle bag and without even opening it began to point it at his at the shadows that surrounded him.

A loud _rat-tat-tat _filled the air as he shot off a stream of bullets in a circle around where he stood.

"Anybody hit?" Tony shouted. As each person checked in, he breathed a little easier, but McCauley, who apparently had an automatic weapon in his possession, just seemed squirrelier and squirrelier.

He screamed as loud as he could, then barged forward into the darkness, firing indiscriminately as he went. The agents were forced to take cover as he ran around a blind corner, out of sight.

"Shit!" Tony said. "Pursue him at a distance. No sudden moves, stay low. This guy may not be a genius but he sure as hell knows we can't get close to him as long as he's got that gun."

The sun had started to rise, making everything a little less confusing. They regrouped, following the sound of his ragged breathing and agitated footsteps.

He had made it past the cluster of warehouses and into the parking lot. His path was less random now. He knew where he was going.

"Damn it," McGee breathed. "If he gets to his car when we're parked in the opposite direction, he'll have a serious head start."

"We will not have a chance," ZIva agreed.

The sky was lightening up faster and faster, making it easier to track McCauley's movements but also making it a lot harder to stay hidden. They were forced to leave the block of buildings and step into the open.

The man looked behind him and saw the agents, guns drawn, totally exposed, and he took up position behind a car and opened fire.

The team dove as a whole behind a line of vehicles. The ping of bullets on metal was deafening and was closely paired with the shattering of glass. A shower of window shards followed, leaving tiny red cuts on several faces.

They took turns laying down suppression fire, each poking his or her head over the tattered vehicles to try and get in a decent shot, but more glass was flying every second, and some of the bullets were coming close.

They were all sweating, and breathing incredibly hard, waiting for a break in the gunfire. Ally's hair had fallen out of its usual bun, Ziva's pant leg had torn open at the knee, and McGee had torn up his hands diving for the ground. Anders could barely move an inch for fear the car wouldn't be able to protect him in all his considerable mass.

"Stay down," Tony called. "He can't keep shooting forever. We'll wait him out, and then we'll take him down."

It was almost as if the man had heard, because at that moment the shots stopped. As Anders unfurled himself slightly, however, another burst came through, barely missing its target.

"Listen!" McCauley shouted. "If you don't want to end up a bloody mass on the ground, you'll stay put. I have plenty of ammo left, so if you want any chance of leaving here alive, you'll back off until I get to my car. Anybody tries to look at me, catch a plate number, or shoot me, I can tell you right now I have no problem blowing your head off. Got it?"

When no reply came, he let off another burst, this time almost winging Callie.

"Got it?!" He screamed.

"Okay!" Tony called. "Have it your way. We'll back off!" He turned to his fellow agents. "He's a decent shot and a trained soldier. We have to take our chances and call it in, hope someone else can grab him."

"He must've changed cars already, and we don't have a plate or a description," McGee said. "With all the traffic that should be starting soon, how are they gonna know it's him?"

"Boss," Ally said suddenly. "I can get him."

"No." He said immediately. "Baxter, call Port Authority, let them know he's headed toward the exit. They'll block him off and we'll be able to take him in."

"Which exit? There are too many to cover them all," Ziva said.

"Boss," Ally said.

"We can send in the picture so they know what he looks like," Tony said. They'll make sure he doesn't get past."

"If they arrive in time," Ziva said.

"Boss, I can't get a signal," Lex said. "The call won't go through."

They could hear the steps as McCauley cautiously retreated, keeping his eye on their location as he went.

The beeping of a car being unlocked echoed through the battle-torn lot. A car door being opened, and then…a bang. Several bangs.

Ally had stood up just enough to get an angle on him and let off a single round to his stomach. He fell, crying out in pain as he did so, but not before letting off a reactionary burst.

It had been wild, a quick and inaccurate sweep, but it had done its job.

Ally lay on the ground, still and silent, a large red stain blossoming on her shirt.

**A/N: It's a bit on the long side, I know. I considered leaving it off at "and now, we wait," and posting more later but I thought that'd be too cruel. Lemme know what you guys think. It's my first gunfight-type scene, so I hope it came out okay. **


	25. Chapter 25

**A/N: Big number 25, whazzup?**

Secretary of the Navy Paul Atwood was enjoying a quiet lunch in his office. His wife had given him leave to take a day off from his diet, and he was happily savoring a very large and rather greasy bacon cheeseburger when a call came on the office line—his secretary.

Wiping his hands with an already saturated napkin, he picked up the phone and began to remind her that all appointments were to have been cancelled when she gave him a surprising piece of news.

"Very well, send them in," he said with a barely suppressed sigh.

Three people strode into the room; he recognized two of them, agents David and DiNozzo, but the third was new—a very thin man with light brown hair who was almost certainly an agent as well. They seemed calm, quiet. Maybe this wouldn't turn into another shouting match and he'd get a chance to finish his burger before it got too cold.

"Well, Agents David, DiNozzo—" he let the third fill in with the name, "McGee," before continuing, "to what do I owe this unexpected visit?"

"We wanted to let you know that you can close your little undercover operation," DiNozzo said. "We got the guy."

"Ah, yes, I did hear that you managed to catch Mr. McCauley," Atwood nodded.

"Good news travels fast," McGee said.

"I also heard that he died shortly after the capture, and that he managed to seriously injure one of your agents," SECNAV said gently. "How is she, by the way?"

"She's in surgery. We won't know for a few more hours." DiNozzo said, the muscles in his face twitching erratically.

"Well, I suppose it could be worse," he said sympathetically. "But really, this discussion can wait until after you've seen to your people. You should be with her."

"With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, I'd rather you didn't tell me what to do with my people," came the cold response.

Atwood sighed again. "Look, Agent DiNozzo, I am very happy that you were able to stop Mr. McCauley from doing any more harm, although I would have preferred that he receive a more official form of justice, but his accomplice is still at large and the investigation will continue. Now that you've solved Agent Gibbs' murder, I'm sure that you'll be wanting to take some time off to mourn, and I know Director Vance will be happy to give it to you. This case will remain under my jurisdiction and I will see it to its solution, you can rest assured."

"Tony, I do not think that he understands," Ziva said in mock concern.

"Understands what?" Atwood asked, becoming steadily more irritated at the intrusion.

"What we mean when we say that we caught the guy," McGee said. "We aren't talking about McCauley."

"You found the accomplice?"

"Yup," Tony said. "Luckily for us, McCauley stayed alive just long enough to point the finger at someone."

"And then Abby, our forensics tech, verified it for us." Ziva added. "She said that it was surprisingly easy once she knew where to look."

"And I gotta be honest, I almost kicked myself when I found out," Tony said with an exaggerated and slightly manic grin, "I mean, it was staring me right in the face, y'know?"

"Do not feel bad, Tony," Ziva said soothingly.

"Yeah, none of us got it," McGee chimed in.

"Well, who was it? Is it someone in my office, at the prison?" Atwood asked eagerly. "Who?"

"It was you."

Tony let those three words hang in the air.

SECNAV sat back in his chair, pulled off his glasses, wiping them slowly with a napkin—a clean one. He rubbed his brow, replaced his glasses on their perch, and then said, "I understand that you blame me for not warning Agent Gibbs after McCauley's escape, and that you think that his death is on me because of it, but this is a serious accusation. You cannot seriously believe—"

"You hated Gibbs," Tony cut in suddenly, leaning over the Secretary's desk. "He was the best we had, sure, but he did his job and didn't give a second thought to the politics. Which all of us," he gestured sweepingly at his fellow agents, "found inspirational, but it killed you, didn't it?"

"We had our differences, but—"

"It all started five years ago," McGee said. "That case we worked—the young marine who was killed in training camp due to faulty weaponry."

"We will never forget that case," Ziva said. "It is the same case when you decided that Agent Gibbs needed a new team."

"It turned out that the defense contractor hired to manufacture those weapons had been cutting costs by using cheap materials, and that the CEO of that company—a personal friend of yours—"

"You have a lot of those, don't you?" Ziva interjected.

"Knew about it the whole time," McGee finished.

"And you wanted Gibbs to bury it," DiNozzo said. "You knew that your relationship with the guy would hurt your image, what with all those military families not being so keen in the idea of their kids and spouses getting dead on account of your friend."

"You were right," McGee said, "you took a serious hit in approval. Almost had to resign."

"Because there is no way Gibbs would ever hide the truth of a case," ZIva smiled.

"So you punished him. Sent us all away, gave him a brand-new team of rejects," DiNozzo said. "Figured that if you made him miserable enough, he'd resign."

"There was nothing wrong with the agents he was assigned," Atwood insisted. "They all came with excellent recommendations."

"For other jobs, maybe," McGee said. "We looked it up, and Barnes was intended to work International affairs in a strictly desk capacity. Thornes was meant for Legal—also chained to a desk—and Adams was just some politician's kid who was supposed to be tucked away somewhere he couldn't screw anything up. And yet they all found their way to Major Crimes."

"It is amazing that Gibbs was able to make use of them at all," Ziva said. "If it had been anyone else, the team would have fallen apart."

"But five years later, there they all were, and you were worried the guy would never leave," DiNozzo said. "Still, his apprehension rates were down, and he agreed to take on that bullying case even knowing it was pure publicity. You thought maybe the lesson had sunk in, and Agent Gibbs would toe the line from here on out."

"But of course, he did not," Ziva laughed harshly. "He found out the truth, and he was doing something about it."

"And you were furious," McGee continued. "After all that work, he was going to screw you over again and again. So you decided to do something."

"It was a good plan," Ziva said. "Well executed, too."

"You found some guy who could have a grudge against Gibbs—not the obvious guy, no, the good behavior guy. The one who'd long forgotten that Gibbs even existed. You laid the groundwork by announcing a vacation, having your warden friend postpone a much-needed hardware update at the prison, using an old encrypted channel for communication to propose the escape to McCauley. You'd help him escape, give him money, supplies, as long as he did you one little favor."

"He jumped on it, of course," McGee said. "Came out of the prison just when you told him to, used your gun to make a show of holding you hostage, used a package you'd left for him in the trunk of your car. He left the gun so you could justify not going after him hard.

"He staked out Gibbs' address, watched him coming and going." Ziva said. "He knew exactly when Kyle would be there and planned to frame him for the crime. It was just by chance that the boy's father came by at the usual time—a stroke of luck for Mr. McCauley."

"You pulled several agents into a nothing case, kept them all far away from any real information." Tony commented. "You even deleted McCauley's prints from the system to keep us off his trail long enough so he could get away."

"Abby found the changes you logged," McGee said. "You should've just had him wear gloves."

"But then we found the secret chat room," Ziva said. "And you were worried that we would catch up to McCauley after all, instead of deciding he was the one and giving up on the arrest as you had hoped. So you thought that it would be best to give us what we wanted—revenge."

"You set up a drop knowing we were watching, figuring we'd kill him, back off of the case, and be none the wiser about his accomplice." McGee said. "And if one of us died in the crossfire, no big deal."

"But my girl Al got him in the stomach—surprising, really. She usually goes for the head or the heart. Never misses."

"Perhaps it was the wind," Ziva offered smugly.

"There was no wind," McGee smirked.

"It's a slow, painful death, getting shot in the stomach." DiNozzo said with a strange hint of pride. "Gave him enough time to spill his guts."

Ziva and McGee both winced. "Really, Tony?" "Come on!"

"Anyway," he continued. "He was suspicious about you the whole time. He kept a record of your chats with him—he shredded them before he left, but that didn't stop Abby. We talked to the warden, who was only too happy to tell us about your little stunt with the cameras and your sudden urge to inspect prison security. Guess you guys aren't friends anymore."

"So now, you will get to see exactly the kind of justice you were hoping to give Robert McCauley—official and very, very public." Ziva smiled.

"Of course, how long a guy like you would last in prison is kind of a mystery," McGee said vaguely. "I'm looking forward to finding out, myself."

Atwood had turned a rather unfortunate shade of green, and was almost shaking. "Please, you must understand, I just—"

"Sorry, times up." DiNozzo said. "Who wants to do the honors?"

"Ladies first," McGee said graciously.

Ziva rounded the desk, shoved Atwood against it and snapped on a pair of cuffs with relish. "Paul Atwood, you are under arrest for the murder of NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. You have the right to remain silent…" She withdrew for a moment, wiping her hands on his shirt.

"What is it?" Tony asked.

"Oh, nothing. It is just that I was right," Ziva said. "The man is greasy."

**A/N: So there you have one resolution. Case closed! Who guessed right and who was stumped? **

**Tune in next time to see the aftermath!**


	26. Chapter 26

Having dealt with an incredibly large amount of paperwork and press releases—it wasn't every day you arrested a player on the national stage—Tony finally found the time to head for the hospital.

Lex and Anders had been there for hours and had called him the moment Al woke up. According to them, the doctors were expecting a full if somewhat slow recovery and were okaying visitors. He should have been happy, but he was dreading the moment when he'd have to talk to her. This part was always the same…

Ziva must have sensed his troubles, because she volunteered to come along. She seemed almost as subdued as he was on the trip over.

It took a moment at the desk, a flash of the badge, the assertion that he _was _family, before he was led to her room. The door was ajar, and she was talking rather animatedly with her fellow agents, a rare smile gracing her face and making her look younger. Too young. Stripped of her glasses and bulky clothes, her long blond hair framing a pale face whose freckles had become only too apparent, she didn't look a day over 15. She was a kid, for God's sakes, and she had almost died thanks to him.

"I'm hoping they let me take a shower soon. I swear about a pint of the blood just soaked itself into my hair," she laughed, brandishing a coppery clump.

"You know what the solution for that is, don't you?" Tony asked as he entered the room.

"Yeah, yeah, I need a haircu—" She paused as she recognized the voice, smile slipping off of her face. "Boss," she said, looking up at him.

The boys recognized their cue to leave, pulling the door to behind them.

"What's the matter?" DiNozzo said heartily. "I thought you'd be asking for a medal. I mean, you blew this case wide open with that little stunt of yours."

"Look, I know what you're going to say," she began quietly, "but I just—"

" Just what? Disobeyed a direct order? Nearly got yourself killed?" He asked, voice getting steadily louder.

"I got shot in the arm, remember?" She said, flopping said extremity to draw his attention to the sling. "It wasn't even my dominant arm. I'm fine!"

"Oh, yeah. You only passed out from shock, almost died from blood loss, and came very, very close to losing that non-dominant arm, but you're fine." He said with a painfully sharp smile. "You're gonna be out of the field for months, you'll be in every kind of therapy the agency can throw at you, plus you'll be on painkillers—the heavy duty addictive kind, when you won't even touch beer, but you're fine!"

All pretense of control had fallen away. His face was red and he was shouting at full force. No longer satisfied with being cowed, Al's eyes narrowed. She pushed back her shoulders and raised herself up a bit further against her pillow.

"I only did what needed to be done!" She said. "He was getting away and I stopped him."

"We would've caught him some other way!" He responded angrily.

"Really? 'Cause as I remember it, before the op went down we were all talking about how this was the only chance. If we missed this, it was over." She smiled again, but this time it was far from pleasant. "Of course, once it's convenient for you—"

"What I say before an op doesn't give you the right to ignore my orders. Situations change! But you're so sure that you made the right call."

"I am the best shot and the smallest target." She said slowly and evenly, putting equal weight on each word. "I was the logical choice, and from where I'm standing, my "little stunt" was the difference between a giant goose egg and the case being wrapped up in a tight little bow—between your boss' case going unsolved and him getting justice."

"And you think that's what I wanted?" He asked desperately. "To have you throw your life away so I could get revenge? My boss would kill me himself if he knew I'd put one of my agents at risk for the sake of a personal agenda."

"But I didn't throw my life away! I'm _fine. _Just like always."

"And there's the problem, right there," Tony said. "Just like always. I have tried over and over to get you to take your own life seriously, but it just hasn't sunk in. So I'm going to make this simple. If you do this ever again, Ally, even one more time—" he shook his head.

She just stared at him, shocked at the use of her full name.

"You're fired."

He turned on his heel, slamming the door so that it rattled in its frame. He couldn't help trying to find something to punch when Ziva laid a hand on his shoulder and guided him to an uncomfortable hospital bench.

"You heard?" He grunted.

"Tony, half the hospital heard. You were not exactly quiet," She said, giving him a weak smile.

"I just—when it's anyone else's life on the line, it matters, but when it comes to her…she can be so reckless. I don't know if I can take it," he said, running a hand through his hair. "And this time, I thought it was really the end. The way she fell…it was like Kate all over again."

"I understand," Ziva said softly.

"And the fact that it's all because I was so driven to catch Gibbs' killer…that she was doing it for me!"

"To lose someone you love is bad enough without having to blame yourself," she agreed.

"But she doesn't get it! That it isn't just her life anymore. She's part of something more, with people who care about her and rely on her." He bit his lip. "A team, you know?"

"Yes, I know," Ziva said, laying a hand on his. "Everything. Including how hard this is for you—and what she means to you."

He looked at her, registering her words slowly. "For some reason, I feel like we're not exactly on the same page."

"You do not have to hide it from me, Tony." Ziva moved closer, lips brushing his ear as she whispered, "I saw her leaving your hotel room. _I know._"

He pulled away abruptly. "What the hell are you implying?"

"It was not difficult to figure out," she explained. "The things that you say to each other. The way that she talks about you—so protectively—the way that she gets between us whenever she can, follows you wherever you go and glares at me the whole time. Taking a bullet to avenge a man she's never met, just for you—"

He stood up suddenly, marching back into Ally's room and closing the door.

She spared him a halfhearted glance, eyelids lowered, and said, "Look, Boss, I've got about an hour 'til the next nurse comes in to do her poking and prodding, and I'd really like to spend it…not being yelled at. Can this wait?"

"This isn't about that." He said shortly.

"Oh," came the slightly encouraged reply.

"This is about Ziva," he said firmly.

"Oh," she said, less enthused. "Well, of course that should take top priority. I should thank her. This is the fastest you've ever gotten off the topic."

"That's what I'm talking about…" He looked at her dubiously. "Have you been going out of your way to be unpleasant to her?"

"Like how?" She asked, all innocence.

"Like glaring at her, making her feel unwelcome, lying about Lex having a secret girlfriend to make sure we wouldn't be on stakeout together?"

"Oh…" She shrugged. "Yeah, kind of."

"Why on Earth would you do that?" He asked, no longer even angry, just bemused. "After all that she's been through…the death of a man who was the only decent father figure she ever had, not to mention the divorce—"

"She's divorced?" She asked, surprised. "Since when?"

"Well, okay, it was two years ago, but I only just found out about it, and it's not like those feelings just go away…"

"Boss, I have to break a rule," she said brusquely.

"I—what?"

"But to be fair, it's only to fix what I did by breaking the first rule—aw, man, that was my favorite rule, too…"

"Al, I'm not in the mood to be any more confused than I already am, so—" he laid a hand in front of him, inviting her to share.

"I want to apologize to Agent David," she said simply. "And you, if that's okay."

"Uh, sure." He cracked the door and gave Ziva a discreet come-hither wave.

The Israeli-American, who at this point was nearly as lost as he was, stepped into the room. She paused expectantly for Tony to explain what was going on, but he just tilted his head towards Al and waited.

The young woman composed herself, trying to look as professional as possible while sporting a bright blue sling and a hospital gown. She scrabbled for her glasses on the stand next to her bed, shoved them onto the end of her nose, took a deep breath, and began.

"Agent David, I made a mistake. I took something for granted—something I of all people should know better than to do. And even if I had been correct, it would not excuse my unprofessional behavior—"

"Al, get to the point," Tony said.

"Right." She looked Ziva in the eyes. "I thought you were trying to seduce my boss." Ziva's eyes were suddenly much larger. "Normally, I'd be okay with that—God knows he seduces plenty of women, and I don't go in for that double standard crap—but I also thought that you were married. Which is not okay. It's like the only rule he has about dating. "No intentional dating of married women." And I was worried that with all the emotional stress, you were looking to each other for comfort…" She flapped her good hand awkwardly. "You know. And the Bossman hasn't been himself lately. I mean, he hasn't made a single movie reference in almost five days! I thought if I got between you long enough he might come to his senses before he made a mistake he'd really, really regret." She sighed. "Because of that, I treated you unfairly, and I'm sorry."

Ziva inhaled slowly. "Two things," she said as calmly as she could manage. "First, I did not try to "seduce" Tony."

"Yeah, right," Tony said, wagging his eyebrows suggestively. A glare from Ziva prompted him to add in a tired monotone, "there is nothing going on between us. We are just friends." He looked at her quickly. "We are friends again, aren't we?"

"Of course," she said irritably. "And secondly, why would you ever think that I was married?"

"Actually, I get that part," Tony said. "I've been meaning to ask you, Zi—why are you still wearing your wedding ring?"

Ziva glanced down at the golden band on her ring finger. "This is not my wedding ring." At the inquisitive looks of the room's other occupants, she continued. "I mean, it is _a_ wedding ring, and it is _mine_, but it is not from my wedding. After the divorce, I was not ready to begin dating again, so I bought this to discourage men from hitting on me." She blinked. "I forgot that I was even wearing it."

"Still, if I had just bothered to ask instead of jumping to conclusions, none of this would've happened. Sorry," Ally said again.

"From me, too," Tony said. "If I had taken you seriously when you said the two of you weren't getting along, your whole disgusting misunderstanding might have been cleared up a while ago."

"Misunderstanding?" Ally asked.

"Yeah, I'm not entirely clear on it, but I think Ziva here thought that you and I were having some sort of secret illicit affair." He said it with a surprising air of nonchalance.

"Oh," Ally said thoughtfully. "Eww." She wrinkled her nose. "I mean, no offense, Boss, but…eww."

"None taken. 'S exactly what I thought."

"Let me make myself absolutely clear," Ally said. "The Bossman here is like the big brother I never had. I would never, ever think of him in _that_ way." She shuddered.

"You have an older brother," Tony pointed out.

"Like the big brother I don't hate, then," she responded.

"…That's so sweet of you to say," he said.

"But I can see," she continued, "where you might get the idea that I like him. After all, when you look at the way I was acting—well, jealousy is far and away the most obvious choice. Occam's razor, don't think zebras and all that, but…"

"_Zebras?"_ Ziva mouthed at Tony, who responded, "_Later."_

"How could you think that it was mutual? Putting aside the actual age gap, I'm so scrawny that in plain clothes I've been mistaken for his teenage daughter. Multiple times! It takes every wardrobe trick I have just to get people to believe me when I say I'm 23."

"23? Ziva said in surprise. "You are very accomplished for one so young."

"She's 26." Tony interjected. "But they don't believe her when she tells them that."

"Not to mention he hates my hair," Ally added.

"True," he admitted.

"Um…?" Ziva asked.

"It gets everywhere," he explained. "Last week I found a strand wrapped around my toe, cutting off the circulation. And that's when she keeps it in the bun."

"So why would you ever think he would have a thing for me, let alone act on it?" Ally prompted.

"The way that you talked to each other…like this morning, when he asked if you had had a late night and you said, 'no later than usual," she struggled to explain, suddenly aware that her evidence wasn't as concrete as she thought.

"While that does sound oddly sexy, coming from you," Tony said, "I was asking that because she'd told me she was having trouble sleeping."

"Yes!" Ziva pounced triumphantly. "The conversation at the bar! She said that she couldn't sleep without a warm body next to hers and you said that once everything got back to normal, you'd—" She stopped as they both began to shake with laughter. "What?"

"You have really awful timing," Ally giggled.

"We were…talking…about her dog!" Tony struggled to breathe.

"But…you were so close together! She was whispering in your ear!"

"That bar was really noisy," Ally said.

Ziva's shoulders slumped. "I feel like an idiot," she said. "I came to all the wrong conclusions when there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything." She shook her head, fighting back a relieved smile. "Like that thing with the hotel room. I am sure that the two of you were discussing the case and the man's shirt that Agent Duncan was wearing was just her pajamas."

Suddenly, Al shrank back into her pillows.

"Yeah, that's where you get me," Tony said. "See, Al's never been in my hotel room."

"Oh?" Ziva said. "I just assumed—it was in the same area, and Agent Duncan crossed the hall as I was walking by—I thought she must have come from your room."

"Al's room is next door to mine," he said stiffly. "Lex and Anders are lodged across the hall." He turned to Ally, who was trying very hard to disappear into her bed. "Please tell me you were with Ian," he said through clenched teeth.

"I would," she said quietly. "But I don't think he'd back me up on account of he's not a liar."

"Sorry, Ziva, but could you give me and Al a second?" He asked. "We need to discuss something."

**A/N: So, stuff. And things. Well, there's the Ally question all wrapped up. I know some of you caught the clues—the bar conversation****, por ejemplo****. Thanks for that, by the way. Makin' me feel bad. Like it was obvious. XP **

**Review if you please!**


	27. Chapter 27

Ziva stood in the waiting area just outside of Agent Duncan's room. Even with the door closed, she could hear raised voices, both male and female. She could only imagine that what she had witnessed was Ally returning from a night in Lex's bed rather than in Tony's, and that Tony was less than pleased about the situation. She almost felt bad for having brought it up; if she hadn't, their relationship would have stayed a secret. And then…

A nurse holding a tray of medical instruments approached the door hesitantly, moving to knock when it suddenly opened all on its own. Tony stood there, cell phone in hand.

"I can come back later, sir," the nurse said awkwardly.

"No, go ahead," Tony said, red-faced and irritable. "She's all yours." He turned to look at Ziva. "Hey. Just got a message from Abby saying there's something we need to see."

"Really?" Ziva looked at her own phone. Nothing.

Tony was already halfway to the elevator by the time she looked up. "You coming?"

* * *

><p>"So…" Ziva said, glancing at Tony. He had been silent for the entire trip.<p>

"So?" Tony asked, firmly gripping the steering wheel. He knew what was coming.

"What did Ally say?"

Tony sighed. "She and Baxter have been seeing each other secretly for the past six months."

"Six months?" Ziva asked, surprised. "But that is—"

"When I hired him?" He grimaced. "You noticed that, too, huh? She claims that he asked her out a full three hours before I offered him a job, making it a 'preexisting condition.' Never thinking to tell me about something that would affect my team!"

"Well," Ziva reasoned, "If you did not notice for six months, it must not have affected your team very much."

"Gee, thanks," He said. "You sound just like her. Forget the part where she lied to me for some guy after everything we've been through together. Forget the fact that she's breaking the rules."

"The rules?" Ziva asked. "Do you mean—you kept rule 12?"

"Of course," he said simply. "Didn't you?"

"I did not see how it was necessary."

"Why, 'cause your team members would never date each other behind your back?"

"They are both straight men, so no, I do not think that that is a concern," Ziva laughed, "but what I mean is that NCIS has never had any policy against it. So long as the relationship does not affect the job, I do not see a problem. Besides, you have broken that rule yourself. Paula Cassidy, E.J. Barret…"

"Yeah, 'cause those ended so well. The whole dating a coworker thing just doesn't work." He said in a case-closed sort of way.

"Perhaps," Ziva shrugged. "But perhaps they, unlike some of us, are not too afraid to try something just because of how it _might_ end."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He said sharply.

"It is not supposed to mean anything," she replied, voice soft. "It is merely an observation."

Their eyes met for a moment as Tony idled at a red light. He seemed ready to say something when someone honked behind him and he turned his focus back to the road.

"In any case," Tony said, "she should have been honest with me. We're teammates, and we need to be able to trust each other. Of course, she doesn't see it that way. She says it was a necessary evil, that if she had told me I probably would have ruined it for her." He rolled his eyes. "Whatever that means."

"Tony," Ziva said. "What have you been doing to that poor girl?"

"Nothing!" He said.

"Really?" She tilted her head to the side. "Because I believe I have been on the receiving end of your "nothing" before, and it is very much like driving off any man who shows the slightest interest in me, regardless of how I feel."

"Well, that's different," he said, "Ally is…"

"Not a child." Ziva said. "She has the right to decide what she wants."

"I know," he said, frustrated. "It's just…look at her! She's this tiny little doll person. On the job, I trust her with my life, but off…she has waist-length hair, Ziva. You know who has waist-length hair? Seven year olds who haven't lived in the world long enough to understand that getting snagged on every button, zipper and fingernail that passes you by is not normal. Sometimes she even wears those little plasticky thingies…what are they called…"

"Barrettes?"

"Whatever. The point is, I look at her and I see this kid sister who still needs protecting. And with how reckless she is—" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know."

They arrived at the NCIS offices, both slightly lost in their own thoughts. They made the trip down to Abby's lab in silence. When they stepped out of the elevator, the hallway seemed to echo their mood. No music.

The lab was dimly lit, flickering. Candles. There were tiers of candles forming a strange circle around the lab table. And folding chairs within that circle. A black tablecloth had been placed over the table, and sitting in those folding chairs were McGee, Jimmy, and Ducky, all holding hands. Abby was standing at the table's center, arms open wide.

"Please, sit," she said with an almost ethereal voice.

"Abs, what's going on?" Tony asked. "You said you had something I needed to see."

"Yes, Anthony." She said with a beatific smile. "You needed to see how much all of us love you, and how we will always be here for you, even when you make mistakes."

Ziva, suddenly realizing what this was, quickly darted around the table to whisper in Abby's ear, "It was a misunderstanding,"

"Really?" Abby asked.

Ziva nodded.

"Oh. Okay. Timmy, could you turn on the lights?" She asked. "These candles are making it kind of stuffy."

"Okay, seriously, what's going on?" Tony said, not willing to let this drop so easily. His eyes widened suddenly. "This is an intervention, isn't it?" He only had to see Ziva's guilty face for confirmation. "Seriously, you guys all thought I would date one of my people? I mean, come on, I'm not McGee!"

"Hey! I've never dated any of them!" McGee said. "They just…come to me."

"Yeah, well you should've followed my advice. Then your agent—Heather, was it?—wouldn't still be looking at you with hearts in her eyes."

"I did exactly what you told me to!" McGee insisted. "It's just…"

"It's just what, McGee?" Abby asked, suddenly cold.

"Uh…" McGee's throat seemed to seize up on him.

"Um, Abby?" Ziva jumped in, trying to change the subject. "What exactly were your plans?" She gestured at the darkly decorated table.

"Yeah, I thought we were gonna have a séance or something." Tony added.

"Oh, well, I actually did have something to show you, but I was saving it till the end of the story sharing," Abby said. "I guess I can show it to you guys now, though." She swept the cloth off of the table with a flourish. "I finished putting the pieces together!"

On the table, still contained in a plastic evidence baggie, were the many tiny pieces of wood from Gibbs' boat carefully glued back together. Although some paint had been scraped off and some splinters seemed to not quite fit in, the word was easy to read.

"_FAMILY_," it said.

A hush fell over the room. The chairs quickly became useful again as each of them sank into a seat, just looking at that word, thinking of the hands that carved it. This was the word that had angered Captain Gett so. This was the word that Gibbs had in his mind the night he died.

"He started that boat the day we were separated," Tony said. "I remember thinking how weird it was, him making boats again. And every time I visited, it seemed like he had barely worked on it at all."

"I think it may have been his way of feeling connected to you all," Ducky said. "In much the same way that he became so attached to Kyle, an intelligent child whose father was not able to care for him as he should. In much the same way I am sure that all of you have tried to find people to recreate what you had here."

Tony thought of his own search, and how it never seemed to be the right fit with any of the teams he was assigned. How it wasn't until he insisted on handpicking his agents one by one that he finally found what he was looking for. How it felt the moment he clicked with each of them—one, a sharpshooting technophobe who seemed to value the lives of others before her own, another a mature-beyond-his-years computer genius on whom he could always rely, and the last, a street-smart human weapon who never backed down from a challenge.

He looked around at his former partners, both of whom were silently nodding in agreement with what Ducky had said. He felt a sudden urge to meet their teams and get to know this ever-growing extended family that he was a part of.

The lights were turned off once again and the stuffiness ignored as they each began to share a story about Gibbs, about how he had touched them and helped them to grow, about who they had become, all thanks to him. They stayed that way for hours, until the sun had begun to rise in the morning, and they each realized that there were things to be done and preparations to be made.

One by one, they stood, and touching briefly that jagged piece of wood wrapped in plastic, they went their separate ways.

**A/N: Hey…so life happened there for a while. Oops. Hope you liked this chapter. Epilogue will be posted soon (like tomorrow, not three to four weeks soon). Review if you feel like it!**


	28. Epilogue

"I don't know…it just seems like McGee has all these plans and I still have no idea if she even feels the same way." Tony said with an agitated sigh.

Ally squirmed a bit next to him, saying, "Um, Boss? I'm grateful for the ride and everything, since my car's in the shop, and I'm glad that you feel like you can confide in me, but…can we not talk about this? I just don't feel comfortable talking to you about anything that might be related to you having sex. It conjures up images that I can't unsee…"

DiNozzo laughed. "I'm just talking about dating…besides, you were all set to get involved in my love life a year ago."

"And I have since admitted that I was wrong. How would you feel if I started talking about my relationship with Lex?" She pointed out.

"Considering I'm letting the two of continue that abomination you call a relationship, I'd think you'd be more eager to show your gratitude."

"Letting us?!" She half-yelled. "You watch us constantly and threaten to transfer one of us if there's even a hint of PDA."

"If it makes you feel better, I always mean him when I say that," Tony said with his best charming smile.

"I gathered," Ally said drily. "Fine, what do you want to talk about?"

"It's just…we've known each other for what…almost 15 years, now. And sometimes we were partners and sometimes we were friends and sometimes it felt like we were even more than friends. But then she gets married, and I try to convince myself that it's over, and friendship is all I'll ever get so it had better be enough, but then we have that fight and we aren't even friends anymore, but now we're back to being friends…and in a weird way it was almost easier when she was married, because there was none of this uncertainty, you know? Like, how do I tell her? What if she doesn't feel how I feel? What if she does and it doesn't work out? I don't want this to be some fling, I want it to last…which is probably what scares me the most." He ran a hand through his hair, slightly winded from his tirade. "What do you think?"

Ally looked slightly dazed from this onslaught of intimate information, but she recovered just enough to say, "Remember when I begged off working with Lex on that stakeout because his incessant chatter about his girlfriend had forced me to dub him Mr. Fluffy Ball of Cuteness?"

Tony looked at her, slightly surprised by this change in subject. "You're about to call me that, aren't you?" He asked.

"Of course not," Ally waved her hand dismissively. "At least not out loud. Remember how Lex then told you he didn't have a girlfriend, and you thought I was lying, and then you found out we were together, so you thought he was lying?"

He nodded, not really following her train of thought.

"Well, in a way, neither of us was lying." She said simply. "You see, at the six-month mark Lex decided he should have the right to call me his girlfriend."

"Six months?!" Tony asked.

"Yeah, totally jumping the gun, right?" She said.

"Not really…"

"Well, I don't like labels." She shrugged. "Anyway, he spent the entire stakeout trying to change my mind. I didn't wanna talk about it, so I called him a silly name and refused to be alone with him for extended periods of time. And then when he heard what I said from you, he thought I was making fun of him. He accused me of being too ashamed to be his girlfriend, which is what led to our little hotel heart-to-heart." She sighed. "Do you see my point?"

"You have one?" He asked, truly lost at this point.

"Two, actually." She said. "The first is: I am the last person you should be asking about this. I have no idea what I'm doing. Ever forward step in my relationship has consisted of Lex pushing for the next logical stage of commitment and me dragging my heels for as long as possible."

"Uh-huh…and the second point?" He prompted her.

"As awkward as that process may sound to an outsider, it works for us. Because we're us. And knowing what we do isn't gonna help you figure out you. Only you can do that. And maybe a licensed psychologist."

"I have considered asking Ducky," Tony muttered.

"But fine. Let's look at the facts, shall we?" She asked, hands held in front of her as she prepared to count off her list. "Almost a year ago, you get tapped to fill in the open spot in the D.C. office. Three months later, Ziva asks for a transfer and ends up right next door, and closer to you."

"And Abby, and McGee, and Ducky, and Jimmy." He reminded her. "After what happened, none of us wanted to leave the next reunion to chance."

"Okay. Whatever." Ally continued. "The two of you "run into each other" at the same coffee shop every day except Sunday."

He tilted his head noncommittally.

"Even Sunday?" She guessed, surprised.

"Only sometimes," He said, qualifying it. "Our apartments are only ten minutes apart."

"Oh, and how did that happen?" She asked sarcastically.

"It was a coincidence," Tony asserted.

"Uh-huh." She said, looking at him with her very best "I'm onto you" expression. "Well, you also have a standing movie night every week."

"I like movies. I like sharing them with people. It's a friend thing," he insisted. "You have Sunday dinner with Anders every week, does that mean you're dating?"

"I have Sunday dinner with Anders and his fiancé every week," she corrected him. "It's not really comparable."

"Well, if you want to be picky…"

"Every time one of you has a tough case you brainstorm about it over dinner," she said.

"Who told you about that?" He asked, panicked.

"I have my sources," she said mysteriously.

"Abby?"

"And some of them are named Abby," she admitted.

"Well that's all well and good," he said, "but that doesn't mean she thinks of me as more than a friend…" He sighed again, pulling into a parking spot and turning off the engine.

"Are you really gonna make me say this?" Ally huffed. "Every other phrase is an innuendo. Every time you walk in she gives you elevator eyes, and she follows you into the men's room with uncomfortable regularity. She likes you! So you can say something, or you can wait for her to say something, but somebody's gonna have to make a move, here. You're not gonna be in an elevator, just the two of you, and suddenly and spontaneously go in for a long, passionate kiss, before confessing that you've always been into each other, then walk out of the elevator holding hands and be more than friends forever. At this rate, you guys are gonna be living together before one of you actually says it."

"That's funny," Tony said. "I overheard Lex telling Anders that you've never actually said you like him. Talk about calling the kettle black."

"Yeah, well," she said, undoing her buckle and slipping out of the car, "we have sex. So I think he knows." She shut the door with a slam.

"Ah!" Tony said. "Speaking of images that can't be unseen! Dammit, Al!" He said, getting out with an equally violent slam.

They stepped out of the elevator and into the bullpen. Ziva was sitting on her desk just across the partition.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello," she smiled at him.

"Looks like we're in for a slow day," he said. "No case yet. How about you?"

"The same," she said with a shrug. "But sometimes going slow is nice." She looked at him with eyebrows arched invitingly.

He gulped involuntarily, then said, "So we still on for tonight?"

"It is movie night, after all," she said. "I am looking forward to it."

He found himself staring at her lips as he remembered what Al had said in the car. He thought for a moment, and then said, "Actually, Ziva, I was hoping to talk to you about—McGee?"

"McGee?" She asked, confused. She turned her head to see McGee exiting the elevator. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hey, guys." He said, strangely energized. "I'm just here to tell Abby something."

"And you could not call?" Ziva asked. "Not that it is not wonderful to see you," she added.

"It's really more of an in-person thing." He stuttered.

"It's not the thing we talked about, is it?" Tony asked. "Because I went to a lot of trouble to get Abby the night off tomorrow, not to mention what I had to go through to get that reservation."

"I thought you just had to call your dad," McGee said.

"Exactly. The old man never picks up when I call. We were playing phone tag for hours."

"Well, thank you. And tomorrow night is still on. This is something else."

"So?"

"Well, you remember my new book, _L.J. Tibbs' Last Case_?" He asked.

"Yeah, you still haven't let us read it." Tony said bitterly.

"Tony, you can buy it when it comes out like everybody else," Ziva chided.

"Why did you just say 'you' and not 'we'?" He asked suspiciously.

"No reason…"

"Anyway," McGee said. "My publisher showed an advance copy to an agent he knows and…I've been offered a movie deal!"

"Really?" "You've gotta be kidding!" They said at the same time.

"Yup," he said proudly. "They're starting with Deep Six and if it does well, they're doing the whole trilogy. And each movie will be dedicated to Gibbs' memory."

"That is wonderful, McGee!" Ziva said. "And I am sure that Abby will be thrilled as well."

"Yeah," he said. "I gotta go tell her." He strode to the elevator at the back of the bullpen and headed down without another word.

"Do you know what this means?" Tony said.

"That soon, many more people will know about Gibbs and what he meant to us?" Ziva said.

"Well, yeah, that," he agreed. "But also—they're gonna be hiring actors to play _us_."

* * *

><p>McGee walked into Abby's lab, smiling and saying, "Hey, Abs, how's it going?"<p>

"Tim? I thought dinner wasn't until tomorrow…and…at night." She said, seeming somewhat flustered.

"Oh, it is." McGee assured her. "There's just something I couldn't wait to tell you."

"Oh, okay." Abby smiled strangely. "Are you going to get down on one knee?"

"Huh—wha?" McGee said, tongue semi-paralyzed. "What do you mean?"

"When you ask me to marry you," she said. "I always figured you for the traditional type."

"I was going to—tomorrow—but—book…" He struggled to grasp the situation. "How did you know?"

"You ask me out to dinner the night before my birthday, you get a reservation at an impossible restaurant, and you get Tony to get me the night off. Plus my favorite ring went missing last week and magically reappeared right where I left it three days ago." Abby smiled. "You may be the investigator, but I'm not blind, Timmy."

He just stood there, slightly bemused.

"So can I see the ring?" She asked excitedly.

"I don't actually have it…" He said sheepishly. "I was planning to ask you tomorrow. That way…"

"I'd have a happy memory to go by, right?" Abby said, smiling weakly. "I know. It's a really nice thought." She pulled him in for a quick hug. "Thanks, Tim."

He rested there for a moment in her arms before asking, "So does that mean it's a yes?"

"Hmm…I don't know," Abby said, squishing her mouth to one side thoughtfully.

"I-if you're not ready, I understand," he said nervously.

"Well—"

* * *

><p>"Why not?" Tony asked. "I think it's a perfect fit."<p>

"Because she is Hispanic, Tony."

"So?"

"So I am Israeli. We do not look the same, and the accent would be all wrong."

"She can fake the accent, it's called acting—"

McGee walked out into the office once again, looking absolutely shattered.

"What's up, McGillicutty?" Tony asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm…engaged," he said slowly, not quite believing what he was saying.

"No way," Tony said. "You asked her?"

"Sort of…she figured it out." McGee smiled suddenly. "And then she said yes!"

They sprang from their seats to hug him.

"That's great, man!" Tony said.

"I am very happy for both of you." Ziva said, beaming. "And I will be expecting my invitation very soon."

"Not before someone asks me to be the best man," Tony says.

"I don't know about that, Tony," McGee said hesitantly.

"Believe it. It's happening." He said. "I've been planning this for a while."

"I must go talk to Abby," Ziva said.

Tony clapped a hand on McGee's shoulder. "My little Probie, all grown up. The Boss would be proud."

"You think?" He asked.

"Yeah. He knows you'll take care of her the way you should." He smiled. "And if you don't, I'm sure he'll find a way to Gibbs slap you from the grave."

"If anybody could do it, it'd be him," McGee laughed.

"You guys still gonna be able to make it to the bar on Friday after all this excitement?" Tony asked. "Jimmy says he might be a little late because the baby has a doctor's appointment."

"Of course," McGee said. "Nothing's gonna stop us from toasting the Boss. Not even an engagement." He laughed suddenly.

"What is it?" Tony asked.

"I always thought you'd get here first." McGee said. "Y'know, with Zi-"

"Whoa, what are you talking about?" Tony said. "I'm not the kind of guy who settles down. And anyway…she and I…we aren't…"

"Whatever you say," McGee said. "I've got a long drive back to Norfolk."

"Yeah, you should probably think about changing that," Tony said. "Commuting can be hard on a relationship."

"Maybe I'll take your job," McGee grinned.

"You can try," Tony said, mirroring his grin.

* * *

><p>It had been an uneventful day, casewise, and both team DiNozzo and team David were packing up to go, talking as they went.<p>

"It's not happening, Lex," Ally was saying just behind Tony and Ziva. "Every time I go back there, they try to get me on friendly terms with the 35-year-old drug addict who lives in their basement."

"But you've already met my parents!" He insisted.

She stopped to look at him, planting herself just in front of the elevator and creating a blockade at the doors.

"And I'm telling you, you can meet mine. Alone. But _I'm_ not going anywhere near that place."

Ziva and Tony waited a bit, but the argument didn't seem to be anywhere near winding down, so they let the doors close.

It was just the two of them in the elevator. Tony felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to look ZIva in the eyes. To his surprise, she seemed to feel the same way. They stared, barely breathing. Almost unconsciously, Tony flipped the emergency stop switch on the elevator panel. The room went dark, only backup lights illuminating their faces.

They leaned in close to each other, just looking. And then Tony made his move.

"I'm into you!" He blurted out.

"What?" She said, bewildered.

"I mean…I like you. A lot." He sighed helplessly. "More than a lot. And more than as a friend."

"Okay…" Ziva said slowly.

"And I was hoping that tonight could be more than just a friendly movie night. Like maybe a date—for instance."

"For instance?" Ziva echoed, smiling.

"Yeah." He felt himself starting to sweat. "How about it?"

"What exactly did you have in mind for this date?" She asked evenly.

"Well…" He said, feeling his courage start to come back. "I was thinking that after the movie we might go back to my place for a home-cooked meal." When she looked at him with a quizzical brow, he amended his statement. "And by home-cooked, I mean the takeout of your choice."

"It is sounding good so far," Ziva said. "Anything else?"

"Well, it's just occurred to me that you've never actually seen the inside of my new apartment," Tony said.

"True," she agreed.

"I thought maybe I could give you the tour. You know—the kitchen, the living room…"

"And the bedroom, as well?" Ziva asked.

"I'm open to suggestions. And I have to say that my bed is really nice. You might even want to take it for a spin, who knows?"

"Who knows, indeed?" Ziva said, eyes flicking up and down Tony's frame. He found himself gulping again. "We should probably get out of the elevator. You know, so the others can use it."

"Oh, right." He said quickly, flipping the switch back on and flooding the room with light.

As they reached their floor and the elevator settled in, Ziva leaned in and gave him a soft peck on the lips. "Until tonight, then."

"Yeah," he said breathlessly.

The doors opened, revealing Ally waiting, arms crossed.

"Oh, right," he said. "I'm your ride, aren't I?"

"Yup. I'd get Lex to do it but he has someplace he has to be." As Ziva walked over to her car, Ally called, "See you tomorrow, Agent David." Ziva waved, casting a small smile in Tony's direction.

Ally and Tony walked to his car, settling in. Finally Ally said, "Tell me you actually accomplished something in that elevator. God knows you took forever."

"Yeah, something happened," he said, grinning. "Thanks."

"For what?" She asked, all innocence.

"You know what." He asked with a knowing smirk.

"Oh, that." She shrugged. "No thanks necessary, Bossman. Just promise me we'll never have to talk about this stuff again. We could stay in my wheelhouse. Like guns and puppies."

He just laughed and shook his head as he started up the engine.

"Please?"

**A/N: And there you have it. Hope you liked it! I didn't realize how long this would be once I actually wrote it down. I tried very hard to offset the sappy with the snarky, so let me know if I succeeded. You didn't think I was gonna let the team stay separated, did you? :P Thanks to everyone who's read and/or reviewed this long and wandering first attempt at a fanfic!  
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